So, I did what I knew best. I took my writer’s block out for a little run. Five miles into an eight-miler at 3:30 in the afternoon with the sun blazing and bugs kamikazi-ing into me, I thought to myself, if sidewalks could speak, they’d probably be ragging on me. For sure, they’d be telling me that I was getting my butt handed to me on a neon platter by the two other runners who were almost a block and a half ahead and weren’t even breaking a sweat. Meanwhile, I felt like I had strapped 20-pound weights to each of my ankles. That’s when it hit me. I couldn’t write, I couldn’t record, and I couldn’t even share this dilemma with the other people I was running with because they were too far ahead.

I started thinking about all the talks I’ve had while running with high school friends, college teammates, mommy friends, co-workers, and strangers. We’d talked about everything from how to make out to how to best hunt down the runners in front of you.

The reality is that my strongest friendships have developed over years and miles of talking while running. Granted, there aren’t many other options of things to do while running next to someone for 12+ miles week-in and week-out. You get used to telling stories with lots of descriptive and, all too often, unnecessary details.

By the time I got to mile 6, I realized that I would probably be in a lot of trouble if sidewalks did decide to speak up one day. There would be a high likelihood that I’d be accused of inflicting physical and emotional abuse. The physical abuse would encompass the constant spitting (yes, I spit when I run, so deal with it…it’s not one of the worst things that runners do while running anyway) and the inconsiderate sound of pounding on pavement brought about by my very loud running style which allows me to sneak up on absolutely NO ONE in any race or run…ever.

The emotional abuse accusations would arise from the bipolarity and the roller coaster-esque nature of my topics of choice for long run discussions ranging from a weekend recap, relationship status update, job hunt follow-up, milestone celebration, mommy moment meltdown, dinner date details, and the ever so tantalizing water cooler gossip. Only rarely have sidewalks confronted me with some not so subtle up-close and personal encounters, in which the pavement had clearly been victorious. But we’ve quickly brushed those off, made our peace, and put it behind us.

As my Garmin beeped away at mile seven, I noticed that whatever the topic, whatever the weather, and whoever the company, sidewalks all around the U.S. and a couple of other spectacular places around the world have gotten to know me way more than even some of my closest friends. They have always been around (for the most part, unless there is construction) to lend an ear, let me run my mouth, curtail any sobbing sessions, entertain my runs with one-step-per-sidewalk-division games, or simply just guide my route.

Those runs have helped me come to terms with many truths over miles of group and/or individual “therapy” sessions.

First truth is that running therapy is WAY cheaper than actual therapy.
And the second truth is a direct result of this series of conclusions:
There will always be another race.
There will always be another goal.
There will always be another city.
There will always be another flight.
There will always be another party.
There will always be another job opportunity.
There will always be another season.
There will always be another guy.
There will always be another adventure.
There will maybe even be another heart.
There WON’T, however, be another life
We’ve got one shot at this one, so take life in stride.

And just as I rounded the corner of mile eight, I thought to myself, if sidewalks could speak they’d probably be saying: RUN LIFE…don’t let it run you!

It is a classic maxim to say: we fail because of the little things we do or don’t do along the way. We all wake up some days wanting to do something, accomplish a goal or perhaps scratch something off our life ‘to-do’ list. More often than we would like to admit, nothing happens, the list gets longer and goals get wrapped up in excuses. It isn’t always because of a major setback, often it is simply due to the compilation of all the little things that didn’t get done or the little choices that didn’t get made along the way.
How we do things makes the difference in the end result we seek. Routines, schedules, training logs and road maps don’t confine us, they actually keep us from self-sabotage. No one ever became a 15 minute 5k Runner, a 3:45 half Ironman or a 4 minute miler out of the blue. We become successful in any facet of our lives over time from the little choices we make every day.
Here are some common mistakes that keep us from succeeding:

• We are waiting for the right time. We think that life will get easier. It doesn’t! We think we will have more time later. We won’t! We think that when life slows down we will be able to fit the things we want into our schedule. This is not the case. We have to decide that it is the right time to adventure, explore, start new hobbies, improve our times and health levels.
• We don’t want to take risks. Living is about taking risks. Risks that push our limits. Maybe we don’t push those limits for fear that we may reach those limits before our end result is attained That is okay! News Flash, everyone is too busy with their own lives to notice how close or far you have come to attaining your own goal.

• We don’t listen. We hear sounds all day, but we have a listening problem. We don’t listen to our hearts, our instincts or our bodies. We need to quiet ourselves enough to hear what each of those is telling us.
• We blame. Instead of taking ownership of our faults, we blame the environment, the shoes, the race course, our schedule and our families. Let us be honest. We need to start the New Year owning our end results. That will be the only way we can begin the journey to change.
• We don’t make the hard changes. Making the same choices over and over again, expecting different results is the definition of madness. We cannot drop our time in the next half marathon if we keep training at the same pace and continue with our inconsistent workout regimen. We cannot lose the weight we want if we keep eating the same amounts of the foods we know are harming us.

Let us leave the grand plans and lofty goals to make changes in our lives aside for a second. Life is in the little things, and success, even more so. Let us stop waiting for that utopian mentality or the perfect time, it is never going to arrive. Harness the present and make it what we need it to be. Instead of setting our sights on a new PR, maybe we can focus on improving our form. Instead of focusing on passing a certain runner during the next workout, we can focus on optimizing our stride length. Do not complain about a race result, we could listen to our body’s need to rest and instead of getting consumed in the things we didn’t accomplish, we could focus on the little things we want to get better at doing.
We are not alone on this journey! Surround yourself with people who are making little choices every day, those are the people who will do big things. Allow yourself to feed off their energy. If you cannot find those people be that person. Start that movement in your own circle. Always remember that how we do things makes all the difference and we fail because of the little things we do or don’t do along the way.
May your 2016 be full of consistent little choices that will lead you exactly to where you want to be.
Have a happy New Year

The other day I ran my fingers through the pages of Bart Yasso’s Book, “My life on the Run”.His running bio is impressive, to say the least. He’s the Chief Running Officer for Runner’s World with more than 1000 races and 30 years of running to his name. He has raced on every continent and developed the magazine’s Race Sponsorship Program which supports more than 7000 races, it is said that “Bart Yasso is a living, breathing, wisecracking testament to the sport’s power to change lives.”  This sport has given him the ability to race all over the planet, helped him overcome troubles with alcoholism and Lymes Disease and has repeatedly placed him into stranger-than-fiction circumstances.
While perusing highlighted sections and recalling thoughts that had crossed my mind when I read it a couple years back, I realized how powerful that book title was.  As I approach my 30th birthday, I have begun to reflect on my life on the run. It has given me a running tour of every place I’ve visited for pleasure, racing or training. It hasn’t changed my life, but has defined it, and it has given me the tools to overcome the highest obstacles I’ve encountered in my path thus far.
Over time, as all relationships do, mine with running has changed and evolved. But overtime, this relationship has solidified.  I have learned from the run what most spend a lifetime finding in self-help books, empowerment seminars and from life coaches. I have grown to love my ever changing, never failing therapists that though, sweaty, smelly, heavy or light, have proven to be the most amazing soundboard: my running shoes.
Here are some lessons I’ve picked up along the way:
1) It is not always about the WHOLE picture. Running can be overwhelming. From the starting line, the finish is, of course, INVISIBLE but one step at a time, we make it over the line. Workouts in their totality may seem daunting, but can be finished, ONE set at a time. Even training schedules for longer distance races may seem difficult to commit to for months at a time, but the only way to make it through those 26 week training calendars, is to take the training, week by week. The schedule you have may not be sustainable for long periods of time, but you will be surprised about the things we have time to fit in our schedule when we want to.


2) Charge on the UPHILLs. ‘Uphills’ are hard. They take longer to get through and over the slower you run, so charge ‘uphills’. Not only will it freak out runners you are passing, but you will get to the descent much faster. The faster you go, the faster it’s done.  And that is what descents are meant for. They are meant to give you a break. So, flow on the downhills. Don’t press the breaks, but let go. When life gives you an incline, remember that what goes up, must EVENTUALLY come down (unless you are listening to one of your parent’s stories in which they actually traveled UP-HILL both to and FROM school, because #thestrugglewasreal)


3) It’s all about RECOVERY and transition. What you train for is important, but how quickly you recover from workouts is equally if not more important to overall absorption of your training and translating it into improved racing. Within recovery, lies your ability to transition between activities and types of workouts. Even within races, like triathlons, the fastest swimmer, cyclist, or runner will not always win. The athlete who manages to efficiently transition between the three disciplines and perform optimally will take the podium. This also applies to workouts. The ability to recover and transition between sets or intervals, will determine the success of a workout. Anyone can run a FAST repeat…not everyone can sustain an average FAST pace for 10, 15 or 20 repeats.


This reminds me of a quote: ‘There is NO use crying over spilled milk’. This quote has gnawed at me since my son was born. Clearly the person who came up with this quote didn’t have kids. But I now realize, there is no use crying. Not because spilled milk isn’t valuable but because if you are crying over spilled milk, you are losing precious time during which you could be RECOVERING, refilling, and transitioning to your next hypothetical bottle.


4) Trust the training. You have to trust your coach. In this sport and in life, you have to believe in what you are doing or at least surround yourself with people who believe in you when you don’t. My high school coach’s words still resonate, “If you believe 1/10th of 1 % of what I believe you can do, you would be amazed at what you could accomplish”. Sometimes all it takes is to have someone believe so badly in your abilities, that that in itself will take you to new heights of achievement. Once you achieve those new levels, you will slowly start believing too.


5) Bad days prove to you how strong you are. Anyone can run a good race on a good day. The challenge is running a good race with a cramp, or running a strong time with blister you can feel forming on your Achilles. Bad days are what separate good athletes from great ones. Rough conditions are the times where ‘mind over matter’ comes in off the bench, warmed up and ready to score. As athletes, we shouldn’t ask for perfect conditions, we should train under all conditions to be able to perform in any condition. Life too deals imperfect conditions, which we have to, like champs, push through. We can, if we remember what we have been trained to do.


6) Best Travel Companion and Guide. Though recently I’ve been scrolling through IG for scenes of the world I will one day travel to, I have to admit, that running was my first and best travel companion. It has run with me through deserts, through canyons, from shore to shore, through numerous cities across the US, in snow, through mud, in National Parks and on National Cross-Country Collegiate Courses. It has run with me under the Eiffel Tower, through Palace Gardens in Versailles, through Ramblas in Barcelona and through dozens of Plazas all over Italy. It has allowed me to run through towns in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Panama or Guatemala and to breathtakingly surreal places in each of those from cattle-filled fields, to waterfalls, volcanic lakes and to endless trails.


8) Expect the Unexpected. The ‘plan’ is there to guide your training, but life happens. Children get sick, hearts get broken, plantar fasciitis flares, weather gets yucky, work deadlines pounce upon us, jet lag sets-in…………..and there is nothing you can do but ride the wave into shore, pick up your board, and paddle back out. The point is to live the journey all the way to the finish, not make the finish the be all and end all. That moment will come to pass too quickly, and then you will be left with an emptiness that can’t be filled. Expect that the only constant will be CHANGE.


9) It is a Love-Hate Relationship: Sometimes while running, I can almost hear my heart mutter “What are you doing to me?”, and all I can muster in grunting back is “I could say the same”, but I wouldn’t change it for the world. Running is the best therapy. But just like any other activity that makes you sweat, it is well worth it! Coming up on 23 years, it is the longest, most understanding relationship I’ve had. We’ve had a few moments where we have had our differences, but not once have we muttered the D word: DONE. The key has been consistency, never giving up, never separating and never walking away from each other. Always side-by-side, stride for stride.


10) It keeps my heart pumping. Running has introduced me to strangers that have become friends and friends who have become family. Years from now, I know we will still be in one another’s lives. I don’t know where, I don’t know how quickly or slowly, I don’t know who will be running by my side….But I know I will be running, chasing sunrises or running towards sunsets.
I can’t wait to spend the next 30, 40, 50 years finding out where “My Life on the Run” will take me, what obstacles it will help me overcome, and what wonders of the world it will bring me to appreciate more dearly.

In a study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, Phillippa Lally (a health psychology researcher) and her team decided to research how long it actually takes to form a habit. The study examined 96 people for a 12 week period, tracking each person on their chosen new habit. Every day the subjects would report whether or not they followed the new behavior and how automatic the behavior felt.Their results showed that Instagram is lying to us (shocker!). You may have heard or seen Instagram posts that talk about how it takes 21 days to form a new habit. According to the study previously mentioned, “On average it takes more than two months before a new behavior becomes automatic”.
What does this research tell us? Well…it is quite simple really. It says:
1)    Don’t wait to start,
2)    Embrace failure, and
3)     Stay patient while trusting the journey.
Don’t wait
Forming new habits that will make us better athletes and more importantly better people, should not be left to a calendar date or a time of year. ‘Today’, the present moment, should be the most appropriate time to begin making these important changes. The here and now is the only time we have to act and effect change, because we can’t change the past and thinking about the future won’t change its outcome either.
Embrace Failure
When trying to form a new habit, it is to be expected that we will forget, we will revert to an old habit, or that we will have ‘off’ days, but it is ok. We should not get down on ourselves. An interesting note that researchers made, arising from the above study, was that“…missing one opportunity to perform the behavior did not materially affect the habit formation process”. In other words, messing up every now and again did not have an adverse impact on the end results of the study. The conclusion being that building better habits is not an all or nothing process. HOW GREAT IS THAT TO HEAR?
Stay Patient & Trust the Journey
Change takes time. Unfortunately we live in a society where time is money and everything is perceived as instant. We want results right away. That said, just because we live in the fast lane doesn’t mean that the results we want to see will take place in the timely manner we would like. Our sport reminds us that sometimes we need to hurt in order to grow; that we must lose in order to gain and that, sometimes, certain lessons are learned only through pain.
Working on your running form, being more consciously grateful for our blessings, stretching before or after workouts, taking time to center yourself by meditating 5 minutes a day are just a few examples of habits that we can incorporate into our daily lives. We have to be aware that embarking on the journey is half the battle. Stay patient, trust the journey. Whether it takes you two months or eight months to implement a new habit in your life to enable you to enjoy a better quality of life, do it! Stick with it because a river cuts through a rock not because of its power, but due to its persistence.
Happy habit forming journey!

Yesterday morning my son asked me, "Did you go running right now?" I said "NO". I actually had just gotten home from spending the night with my sister (a new mommy), my brother-in-law, and NEW NEICE at the hospital.  But, out of curiosity, I asked "Why do you think so"? (pause) " Cause you are wearing running shoes....and running shorts, and running shirt, and running EVERYYYTHING (as he did big circles with his arms)." I had to laugh. It's true, I was decked out head to toe in running stuff. "That's how mama dresses all the time".

But then the guilt settled in. I thought to myself: I wonder if every time I'm not with him, he thinks i'm running (to which 8 out of 10 times, the answer is, yes). I wonder if he's going to start to resent the fact I run. So I asked him "Do you like that mama is a runner"? A little nervous for his response but willing to know the straight-up, uncoated truth, I waited for his response. He looked up at me and said... "YES! You are the fastest momma in all of the world. I love it when you run so fast that lightning McQueen can't keep up." Of course that answer brought me to tears (the good kind). And in true toddler fashion, he followed it with:  " I like when you when you run fast only! Not when you're slow." (Great, no pressure, Right?!?!)

That should be put into a hallmark card for running mommas around the world. As mommas, running the world is hard, and when you add the miles we log for our sport (and our sanity) its even harder because of the crazy mommy guilt we carry.

Thank you for telling me that you LOVE that I run. I needed to hear that. I need to be reminded it's okay for me to go away for a few hours to clear my thoughts and find my happy place so I can come back to you stronger and more energized, to play crazy streets, be a human jungle gym, and race back and forth in the park a million times (even if I just got done doing a 2 hour ride and 6 mile run). You know something? Some people say that mommies can run faster after having kids, and I think it's true! You are the reason mama runs faster now than before she had you!

My BODY changesd Mommy's body changed while carrying you in my belly; My 6pack turned to jello and my hips could have used the CAUTION WIDE LOAD sign from your dump trucks.  And my pain threshold went sky high with the 26 hour labor were I had to fight dragons, zombie armies, enemy missiles,  and secret villans  to set your free. I've become more flexible, not literally, (my yogi friends would be embaressed to claim me), but emotionally and mentally. I'm ready to shift or adjust activities as quickly as you are able to make a mess with a cup and crackers in the living room (unattended). 

My HEART changed. When you came into my life, you made my heart grow. (Maybe that's why I can get more oxygen around to my muscles). I try to train with you by biking on a bike that goes nowhere...and that you think is broken (the bike trainer) while playing with trains,  and we make-up adventure games and magical quests while logging miles in our "running car" (jogging stroller), so that I don't have to be away from you because it hurts when we are far, But when I can't and have to go on my own, I want you to know that leaving to go workout when it's 'still the night' (especially when you are warmly snuggled in my bed because you couldn't sleep or just wanted me to hold your hand) is harder than the workouts that I usually go do, but even harder is when you happen to wake up and say: "Mama don't go." One day you will understand why I do it, and if you don't, I hope you at least try.

As I've witnessed you grow, I've slowly begun to morph into a superhero of sorts who can function on limited sleep, fly to your rescue in a heartbeat,  cure bruises with kisses, make running 10 miles with a jogging stroller/toddler not only fun but look easy,  magically vanish tears with my hugs, and look pretty with bracelets(because you like when I wear them). Everyday I look into your eyes, I see the way you look at me, like spider-mama, and I'm trying to live up to that! Thank you for inspiring, pushing, challenging,  loving that I'm a runner, and most importantly, FOR BEING THE REASON I CAN CELEBRATE MOTHER'S DAY!

Remember when you were little and you ran EVERYWHERE. All around the house, from the one end of the playground to the other, to the car, to the beach, to the cereal lane in the grocery store, to each other, and away from each other. We would run and run and run without a care in the world...not our nutrition, not our compression socks, not our pace, not our time....we would just run until we felt like stopping.

On Sunday, I participated in the Wings for Life Event,  a WORLD WIDE EVENT where runners in  35 countries on 6 contients were running simultaneously  to raise funds for Spinal cord injuries. I ran it with a friend and teammate, Lupe Merlos, and a couple 100 other runners, who would also agree it was an incredible experience.

We ran until we were tagged.  No pace, no distance calculator, no real goal past what we had originally set out to run (13.1 miles- we hit at 1:34). We just followed the road and WFL signs--not knowing what lied ahead in the remaining miles, but NOT WORRIED ABOUT IT EITHER.

Check out minute: 3:58:54 in the live stream above and some cool cats we spent the day with below: