Too Much Blood in My Head

Can headstand practice help my running? Some say yes. Others are more skeptical.

Benefits of headstands:

• improves core strength,
• works on balance,
• improves mental focus,
• more oxygen in the brain for brief periods (better decision making?)
• see the world from a different vantage point

I would think that headstands as cross-training is a bit of a stretch but I’m sure there must be real benefits because holding good headstands is hard. Anything that is hard must be beneficial, right?

Either way, I’m looking forward to a headstand photo on a mountain peak.

Running with Teenagers

So I’ve created a big problem for myself. My wife says she had nothing to do with it, and it is my responsibility to either fix it or work through it. She didn’t create this and is quietly laughing as I figure out how to resolve it.

I have two teen daughters (14 & 13). Both daughters are avid runners. I have encouraged their running for many years and they both really enjoy it. They are in every race they can find, school cross-country, school track team, and run club cross country series.

But the big problem comes in that both daughters want to train with me, and only me. Not with each other, and not alone. We don’t have a treadmill, so every run is outside, and every run must be done with me.

Both daughters race or train up to three times per week, especially in the Spring, depending on how close a target race is at. And now it is Run Streak month (#RWRunStreak) and one daughter is determined to run every day until the end of the year.

I love running and spending time with them. We talk about life, homework (eg. the importance of the Renaissance Period, and reciting pi to nth decimal places), running, and lots of other stuff (eg. how to dance the jive).

I don’t mind all the running and their pace has definitely quickened in the last couple years so I am not really going that much slower than I would normally.

But coordinating our evenings is getting rather complicated. Our evenings lately have been spurts of heading out the door with #1, going back out again with #2, and if I have energy left, going for a stroll with my wife.

The upcoming half-marathon in the Spring is also going to be difficult to figure out. I ran the half with daughter #1 (her first) in 2015 with the younger being jealous that she didn’t get to run a half. This year, daughter #2 wants to run her first half as well. So I’m figuring out how to pace both daughters (and one of their friends) when they all run at different speeds. Wish me luck as I figure that one out.

Running with teenagers can be complicated. But I feel pretty lucky to still have something in common with them.