Run To Inspire

How marathon training and running is helping concentrate at work and increase productivity.

I’ve kinda disappeared a little from the blogosphere, partly due to a lull in inspiration that heartbreak brings, but also due to work getting extremely crazy. The album release, showcases, SXSW trip and video shoots are all sucking away at my free time which means I can’t keep up with my writing. Fortunately I love what I do, so I’m not complaining – and I’ll find a couple of days a week to blog as I write my book.

As my work load increases, I have started wondering how us runner deal with work stress. I was curious to see if there were any lessons I have learn having completed three marathons that could be applied to work. Runners are a dedicated bunch, we push through a lot, and achieve results that often amaze and inspire us. Surely, I thought, I can distil some vital lessons from running to help me out through this crazy work month.

Here are some insights I had while waiting for my haircut this morning.

1. Big Goals – Small Achievements.

I have to put a showcase together on Wednesday for a big client, and it’s a monumental task – fortunately I have an amazing support team that does a lot of it with me, but even over seeing this is a daunting task. Sometimes when I wake up, I just want to bury my head back under the duvet or quit and go work at Starbucks.

When I decided I wanted to run my first marathon in 2010, I didn’t just show up at the start line ready to run 26.2 miles. I’d set a goal of running 26.2 miles but you don’t do it all at once. I broke my training down into runs, that gradually built up over the course of four months so that I was strong enough to run the full distance.

With work when I have a large goal like a show case, I break the tasks down into smaller pieces, like training runs if you will. Booking the venue one day. Designing the invite the next day…. Talking to the band to set them up… Booking hair and make up. All these little tasks add up and eventually an entire showcase is put together.

Marathon training and running has taught me that making big goals is an awesome motivator, but to get there, we have to make small achievements to feel like we’re making progress.

2. Discipline

In training for marathons, I’ve learnt about discipline, I did two runs a week, two lots of cross-training and a long run at the weekend. Further more, I warmed up before each run and stretched (badly) after. I knew that if I skipped training runs, I would not be able to achieve my goals.

In work, I have to be disciplined too. As much as I want to wake up and go straight to work, I know I have to take several steps before. I meditate in the morning, I make sure to eat breakfast and have a cup of coffee. If I don’t do these things, I crash and burn after lunch, so I’ve learned that going slow out of the gate is important to me.

Running has taught me the immediate task ahead, is not the only task ahead. We don’t just get up and run, we fuel our bodies, warm up and then run. The same is true for work, respecting my brain and body gives rise to better performance at work

3. Timing

Runners are obsessed with time. We need to know how fast we were, we push ourselves to be faster, we even do speed workouts to get faster. It’s an obsession!

I bring a little of my Runner’s obsession with time  into the office as I dabble in the Pomodoro Technique. It’s basically short bursts of concentration that are timed with a kitchen timer for 25minutes. My colleagues are not happy when that bell goes off, let me tell you, but it works!

After each 25 minutes I go take a walk break and recover for 5 minutes, before resetting the timer. Avoiding outside distractions during those 25 minutes is key, and really focussing on one specific task is also important to getting things done. Often in the morning, I set a 25 minute timer and go through my emails, then later on in the afternoon I’ll do the same to deal with all the replies. In between, I could 25minutes to make all the calls I need to work on, or to finish a budget. My time segments are goal specific.

Running has made me realize that time is valuable, that efficiency is key and I look to see where and how I can become the most efficient employee.

4. Hydration.

Our body is made of 60% water, and our brain it’s self is 80% water and as a marathoner, I know the importance of replacing water that we lose as we sweat on long runs. Coach Scott used to tell us ways to test for dehydration in our pace group:

1. the pinch test- pinch someone skin and if it takes longer than usual to bounce back, they’re in trouble

2. the speech test- we were told to be on the look out for slurred speech and nonsense talk from our running group

Obviously, we all found this highly amusing and would run around pinching each other whenever we heard someone in our pace group say something odd. We’re likely never to get this dehydrated in the office, but did you know that not being properly hydrated severly affects concentration levels? A study at the University Of Connecticut found that even a 1.5% drop in water levels in our body can impact us. In women dehdration was reported to cause headaches, fatigue and difficulty concentrating and men said they experienced difficulty in performing mental tasks, especially in areas of vigilance and memory, as well as increased levels of anxiety and tension.

Marathon training has taught me the importance of hydration and fuelling my body to optimum results.

5.  Rewards.

I mean I only have to look at my ‘reader’ on WordPress to see that I’m not the only one that runs to eat! Yes- I’m talking to you Miss Peanut Butter, Marathons & Macaroons, Miss Snickers, and Miss Cookie Dough - we all love to eat, and I think running gives us a balance between health and indulgence. I love baking, and chocolate and without running I would be a chunky Brit, and everyone knows you can’t be chunky and live in Los Angeles, so running is my balance.

At work, it’s not as easy as rewarding myself with a Sprinkles every time I finish a budget. That would defeat the purpose. Also we are not dogs, so unfortunately we don’t get to reward ourselves with food.

What I do know is that I need positive reinforcement so when I do my 25minute pomodoro, I go take a walk break, or have a chat with a colleague. There may also be a Starbucks treat once in a while too.

Running has allowed me to be kind to myself, when a task is well done it should not go without reward.

Aside from sore legs, do you bring anything to work that you’ve learned from running?

One of my favorite distractions when I’m running in my neighborhood is the street art that seems to pop up or get refreshed almost on a daily basis. I’m lucky enough to live within running distance of Melrose Avenue, which I believe the tourist guides mislabel as being ‘an exciting & vibrant shopping district’. I’m pretty sure it’s not that exciting in terms of shops, but what I do know is that it attracts a lot of street artists. Whether it’s the foot traffic on that street or the collection of boutique stores that attract them, I’m always surprised to see interesting and thought provoking images. Here’s a few of my favorites:

I noticed The Big Boss Chief over a year ago, it’s such a striking image and the colors are beautiful. The tribal headwear and corporate suite and tie are a real statement about our times.

My absolute favorite though is Morley who is part poet (although he doesn’t consider himself a poet) and a hopeless romantic.

Here’s the latest that I spotted a couple of weeks ago:

“With the sea to our backs and tomorrow at the breach of our lips we ride at the highest speed, laugh like our souls have never known hunger and live our lives awake“

Here’s his romantic side:

I’m also getting into Mr Romano

I’ve not seen his work in a while in my hood so this is off his instagram. Street art is different from graffiti, there’s a couple of major distinctions:

1. Street Art often packs a powerful message about our times or political situation – Big Boss Chief is a prime example
2. Street Art often pays homage to mainstream artists like Warhol, it’s basis comes from art where as graffiti comes from a hip-hop culture.
3. Street Art is often not permanent, artists use paper and wheat based glue which disintegrates over time. Graffiti is paint based.
4. Street Art often has a message, like Morley, where as graffiti is just about the name or tag of the person painting.
5. Street Art can be multi media and often not just limited to paper and paint.

Ever since last weekend’s 10k I’ve been ‘off’, I’ve not wanted to run, I’ve eaten the most unhealthiest food ever and have been in a general funk. I feel like I take two steps forward and one step back in trying to get over this heartbreak. I had a great insight about acceptance last weekend, and realized that if I just accepted this situation exactly as it is, my life would be much easier. But this week it seemed that the slightest thing has triggered a raging depression. Saturday morning was the perfect example, I was supposed to meet someone for coffee, and they flaked an hour before, and I was once again fighting the urge to crawl into bed with a bucket of Ben & Jerry’s for the rest of the day.

Instead I forced myself to go to the coffee shop ALONE and I read some stuff and did some writing. And to be honest after I’d finished I felt much better, thanks partly to Sarah who I skyped with. She’s just got engaged and is running her first marathon in London this year so we had lots to talk about.

She told me that I just needed to find that ‘one thing’ to get happy and as soon as I found it, I’d be back on track. She said that if you give a kid ice cream, they’re instantly happy, because they’re just in the moment with it and they soon forget about whatever was upsetting them. It was a really interesting idea – what is it that would make me happy?  As I ran home, I was thinking about what it is that would make me happy.

And then, the craziest of all things happened.

I looked up at a new piece of street art I’d not seen before and read this:

Duh! It’s not one thing that is going to make me happy again, it’s nothing. It’s accepting everything exactly the way it is right now, and realizing that is happiness.

Happiness is in the now.

And bam, I’m back on track again.

Thanks to two awesome LA Street Art Blogs I follow

http://lastreetartgallery.com

and Melrose & Fairfax

What distracts you while running?

Update – i saw this on my street and had to add it