Running, stressful search for yoga, and seriously? thank god for Nike.

Miles, miles, miles… Nike, I just don’t know that I could ever stop loving you.
I’ve been running off & on since the first of the year – partly due to the fact that I’ve been broken, & partly because my whole schedule has been so out of whack that I oversleep practice & just need to get out & do something.

Knowing myself & my tendency to just do what’s easy, I went ahead & scheduled a training plan for a 10k. Do I know what 10k I’m running the last weekend of the training plan? No clue. I’m sure there’s one somewhere, I’ll worry about it later. :shrug:

One of the great things that I got in 2010 was the Nike+ SportBand watch with the new Polar HR monitor.

Honestly? having that to track all my runs & upload to the Nike Running site is like a special kind of nerd-sport crack. Numbers & data, & things that can be analyzed – oh, it’s all over now. It’s actually been really great because it breaks down the avg for each mile, so that I, not a very fast runner to begin with, can now see that I’m bustin’ out an 8’27″ for my first mile, & then it’s been the 2 in the middle where I fade up to a 9’46″ that comes out to my general 9’19″ overall average. That in mind, I decided to concentrate on mile 3 of last night’s scheduled 4miles & really try to push instead of settling into a chugga-chugga pace on the loooong straightaway that one gets from LaBrea to Crescent Heights, and thankfully the result was a 9’06″ which brought me down to a 9’12″ avg, which I think is a new fastest avg pace for that distance since I started using the site to track things.

Right now, running is just way less stressful than rowing – there’s way less pressure to achieve, to make a certain time, to adhere to anything, and I think that’s why I’m enjoying pushing myself in that. Part of the problem is that I’m ready to move — I want to be moved down to LB & at Beach!Boathouse instead of this kind of half in, half out existence I have at the moment. Bear!Boathouse is a proximity requirement for my life, and will continue to be so as long as I work at Museum!Co, but it would be nice to only have to go there on work days, & be able to go to Beach!Boathouse the rest of the time without having to drive an hour to get there & get back.

Plus Mia, the mommy of Zoey’s boyfriend Argo, is keeping an eye out for a place that’s as close to them as possible so that Zoey will have a beach to run around on (they’re right next to the LB dog beach) and so that we can continue our 1049 practice of communal animal care, so in the end, I have to move – it’s for the children!

Finding yoga should not be causing me this much annoyance. I’m just sayin’.
As I mentioned in another post, I really loved CorePower Yoga when I tried it in San Diego. Unfortunately, they haven’t opened up their studios in West LA or in LB, so I can’t actually physically attend any except when I’m down at SD. That in mind, I still wanted to integrate something other than the same routine I’ve been doing for years now, so I started to look around & see what’s what in my area.

At first, I thought I’d look for a place where I could stack a spinning followed by yoga, which I used to do when I was teaching at Amerisports (and loved!) but honestly I just can’t afford the $225/mo that I’d have to pay over at YAS fitness, or the $150/mo it would approximately cost to do two classes in a row, one day a week. However, I saw that they have this DVD titled Yoga for Athletes, & I was like, “Okay, sweetness. Let’s give that a whirl.”

Well, $11.25, some free shipping & three days later, there it was. I went for a run, popped it in…
…and was seriously disappointed.

For a place that’s all about how it’s sport-driven, kinda hard core, etc & so forth .. this was total beginner yoga. There were a couple things that I found challenging, like the standing split, but other than that — dude, I know how to reach over & touch my toes properly. Are you effin’ kidding me? I’d highly suggest they stop advertising it as yoga for all levels, because I’m around an intermediate 2/3, and I got to the end & actually said out loud, “That’s it? I kinda want my money back.”

As an alternative, I’m doing the free week trial for CorePower Yoga’s online library of yoga classes. While I like the idea of being able to pay $14.95/mo for an actual class anytime, anywhere, I’m going to have to actually sit & go through to see if there are classes I want before they get mah moo-lah. Last night I got in from my run & hit up the Hot Yoga Fusion Class, which was the most similar description to the one I’d done in SD. Once again, total beginner style, and really? Yoga is not a peppy fitness thing — why is your music a 128-count up-tempo beat? I’ve got a bootleg CD that my vedic healer gave me which is just a calm background of melody, singing bowl, & other noises which would probably work way better – lemme know, I’ll make you a copy, and if it means fixing your atmosphere, I’ll give it to ya free!

All joking aside, some of the descriptions look interesting, but I fear that I’m going to have to sit & just let classes play while I’m working so that I can find out if there are enough of them to justify the monthly expenditure. Tried to do it today, but since I don’t have the latest flash player on my computer here at Museum!Co, that idea was a no-go.

Seriously though – it shouldn’t require this much effort to achieve a good yoga class. Doesn’t all this worry cancel out the point of the whole friggin’ thing?

Two songs getting added to the playlist this week:

Rhainna – S&M

Glee cast – Valerie

Speaking of which, I should really clean out my nano — I walked to Target with it on shuffle the other day, & since I only use it for working out right now, some of that stuff is old….

Music: You Got Growin’ Up to Do – Joshua Radin (Simple Times)