Running for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow...

I find a lot of the hikes and runs I've been on go a lot "better" when I have a goal in mind. Better meaning easier, faster, more enjoyable, less painful, less arduous, etc...

Top of our first 14-er (+14,000' elevation)

Mohawk Lakes, CO

Wahclella Falls, OR

Skinning up Baldy Mountain

Sometimes I love going running aimlessly, like when I'm in a new city and wanting to explore or when I have anxiety or emotion to work through.

Birthday run in Forest Park, OR

First run in Portland after the move

Exploring San Diego

Sometimes I'll have no plan when I start out for a run, and it'll be one of those days where it feels freaking fantastic! So I'll just keep running… "I just felt like running."

Over 7-mile run, just because, in Asheville, NC

Over 5-mile run at Cannon Beach, OR

But when I have a vista/waterfall/peak/mileage I'm trying to reach, I can get an adrenaline rush that helps me push through any laziness that makes me wish I'd stayed in bed or want to stop and picnic instead.

Backpacking to Conundrum Hot Springs, CO

McCullough Gulch, OR

Top of Quandary (+14,000')

Angel's Rest overlook, OR

Multnomah Falls, OR

Loops are great because once you pass a certain point, it makes more sense to finish the loop than to turn around to go back the way you came. Plus, then you get to keep seeing more and more new stuff!

Lake loop at my aunt's in MA

Flumes trail, CO

Loop between Multnomah and Wahkeena Falls, OR

Even in my ski bum days when I was skinning nearly every day, I had a point I was shooting to reach. I didn't like making it halfway up the hill and turning around when it got hard or I got tired (hint: it was always hard and I always got super tired). I always figured, I'd made the effort to get my butt out on the hill out in the cold, so I should make the most of it. 

Baldy Mountain, CO

On our hike yesterday, our mission was to see Mt Hood from Mirror Lake AND from the top of Tom Dick and Harry Mountain. Done and done!!

Can't wait to see what's next!

Note the actual rainbow behind us! :)

Baby's first blogger event

Last night I went to my first blogger event. Title Nine here in Portland hosted a bunch of local bloggers in a bra-fitting party called FitFest. Not only did we get to meet a whole bunch of Portland bloggers and Title Nine's #1 bra specialist, but we also got to play with boobie balloons and bounce-test our bras on a exercise bouncy ball. Totally fun night!

I was attending in support for work (we helped promote the event), not because I'm a prominent fitness blogger. Those of you reading know that I am NOT a blogger, in the sense that I have a specific genre I write about and do so somewhat regularly. So when presented with the question, "Are you a blogger?" I simply answered, "I'm a Sweat Pink girl."

When I created this blog a few years ago, it was a way for me to write about my travels, experiences, and thoughts, and share them with my friends and family. It was kind of a substitute for a newsletter. A maybe-once-a-month newsletter. It's morphed over the years, as much as anything can morph that you only halfheartedly work at. After the event, when we all were talking about our various blogs, I ended up categorizing it as a yoga and travel blog. Which it mostly is, though it also deals with various other themes that all interact (at least in my mind). That's one thing that was very apparent to me about the event last night that I loved, and that I've discovered reading a ton of blogs over the last weeks for my job. We had fitness + food, makeup + fitness, art + lifestyle, etc, bloggers all at the same event. We all overlapped with the universal problem of strapping the girls down during work outs! 

One of the major things that's struck me about the blogging community is how much of a community it really is! It was so cool seeing the connections between blog titles, Instagram handles, and faces made last night when people were interacting in person. And I've loved following fitness bloggers connect for runs while traveling after they've chatted online. Seeing the way tips, recipes, workouts, and words of encouragement are shared is simply amazing. It's inspiring me to write a lot more, and I'm so grateful to be a part of this community now, albeit a novice one!

Can't wait til the next event and to meet even more of you out there! 

Handy tips from a handstand addict

Ok, one of my all-time favorite topics of late, HANDSTANDS!

I think handstand has become a bit of a controversial pose. Some people view it as a fancy party trick pose and some view it with barely restrained envy thinking they'll never be able to do that. I do think a lot (arguably too much) of emphasis is placed on it and achieving it. Being able to do a handstand doesn't mean you're a good person. It doesn't mean you've mastered yoga (hint: no one EVER masters yoga). But it is a pretty awesome practice. Inverting and arm balancing is fun and empowering; I've always been an addict of arm balances. I'm far (VERY far) from being an expert. But I've been playing with handstand with increasing regularity in my own practice and in my classes over the last few years. Here's a few tips I've picked up along the way…

1. DON'T BE AFRAID (or rather, try not to)
As we age, we get a sense of mortality. Kids have NO fear, whether it's hucking cliffs on skis or tumbling around on their hands. We learn to fear falling. Hello, it hurts falling on your face! So when your yoga teacher tells you to plant your hands and lift your feet, you hesitate. The best thing you can do for your inversion practice is to take the fear out of the equation. Put a pillow under your face for crow pose, focus on strength building postures for inversions rather than starting with kicking up (next segment), learn how to safely fall out of poses. Having that exit strategy is huge! The wall can be a great training tool but also a crutch that you cling to, and it's hard to let go of it in a crowded class where there are people and water bottles all around you, and you're on hardwood floors. The first time I fear-free kicked up into handstand without a wall was on a wide-open beach. There was no one around for me to kick in the face, or laugh at me for falling. I wasn't afraid to fall in the sand, so I just went for it, and landed it! I then went back home and had some teacher friends spot me falling out of handstand into wheel (or cartwheel out). Knowing I can safely land in wheel pose if I kick to hard or fall out of handstand means I can play with handstand pretty much anywhere (except a china shop).

2. PREP YOUR CORE!

A lot of times with inverting, we go straight for getting the feet in the air. If we shift the focus to getting the hips over the shoulders in the air, and having the core strength to support this, then we have so much more control and stability in the inversion. I can't tell you how many times I've looked at pictures when I struggled holding handstand and I saw my feet over my shoulders but my hips weren't all the way up there. This is pretty impossible to sustain, let alone to be able to play with leg variations and transitions into other poses. Beyond any and all core work, some great prep poses are plank, L-pose, and tuck jumps. All of these focus on getting the hips over the wrists rather than the feet. 

3. SPLITS ARE EASIER! 

I'm going to tell you a secret… Handstand splits are easier than straight up-and-down handstand. It's so much easier to balance up there, but it's also easier to dump into your low back. For a while I got complacent with my handstand practice, using splits as kind of a guarantee to get up there. No bueno. Even in splits, keep the core engaged (hugging the belly button in toward the spine), and elongating the low back (tucking the tailbone). Legs are strong, with the muscles hugging in toward the bones and energy pressing out through the ball mounds of the feet. No banana-ing with the low back!

4. CAREFUL WITH KICKING UP

While I'm working on building the strength to press up into handstand (hands are planted and feet "magically" lift up into the air), right now I can only kick up (and sometimes hop up). By relying on momentum to get up there, it's easy to kick to hard and flip over and to banana the low back. Staying strong is a must for kicking up. When getting ready to kick up, bring the shoulders over the wrists. Fingertips are almost clawing the mat, hands are pressing into the mat getting a lift in the shoulders, heart is melting yet shoulder blades are drawing together. Low belly is hugging in, and legs stay super active. Once the actual kicking part takes place, visualize the momentum shooting into the mat through your hands. This will help ground you while helping to prevent the momentum from flipping your feet past overhead. 

5. HAVE FUN WITH IT!

Inversion and arm balance clinics are some seriously fun classes! Whether you're a newbie learning the basics, or a yogi with an advanced practice, clinics are a great way to break poses down and learn awesome new stuff. Inversions and arm balances are insanely empowering! I mean, you're working to balance your body weight on your hands! They're also fun! They're a great reminder to not take yourself and your practice too seriously. You will fall; you will laugh; you will try again. It's all part of the process!

HAPPY HANDSTANDING!!

Twitter and Instagram: lizwilsonyoga

Well-balanced yogi

How many times have you run into someone you know outside of the place or activity that you know him/her through, and didn't recognize her? The suit-wearing business man at Sunday brunch in worn jeans and a t-shirt. The yoga teacher out dancing in 4" heels and a short skirt. The hipster barista at a spin class in head-to-toe spandex.

We have a tendancy to categorize people when we meet them. Maybe it's a technique to help us remember people and interactions. Maybe it's our evolving psychologies that have yet to break out of our mold-making/archetyping habits. I've been on both sides of this. Some of that was inherent in working multiple jobs in a ski town. I taught multiple yoga classes a week at the studio in town and also hosted and served at a popular fine dining restaurant. Visitors in town would sometimes not initially recognize their yoga teacher from that morning in the black shirt and tie clad server or dress-wearing hostess in front of them. With makeup on too! I'm the yoga teacher in their minds, and they're not expecting their yoga teacher to be presenting them with braised buffalo short ribs and a bottle of wine.

                       Server job

                Yogi/teacher job

                    Hostess job

I found this to be the case frequently in my ski town. Servers were professional skiers, and waited tables at night so that the day could be spend hucking cliffs and filming powder videos. Liftees had masters degrees, and decided they'd rather live a mountain lifestyle than use their degree in an office in a city. Ski shop clerks spent the winters skiing and then moved somewhere equally exotic for the summer, forever following the next season.

I'm finding this is common on the West coast, people working a certain job so they can have the hours they want, or to pay the bills so they can pursue their true passison once off shift. Non-traditional jobs are more common out here, too. Working from home, owning your own business, having unusual hours or work days... All of the above is way more common out here than I found on the East coast. I just read an article about the "slashie" movement in our generation, bartender/aspiring actor for example. In general, I find that people out here don't define themselves by their career or job quite as much. (That's not to say people here aren't hardworking, motivated, goal-oriented, or have careers, or that East coasters aren't passionate!)

I personally love this. I love that nobody is strictly how we initially perceive them to be, that we as humans defy categorization (Divergent, anyone?). People are dynamic and multifaceted. In my worlds as a yoga teacher and on the West coast, things and people are very...fluid. Laid back. Striving for happiness rather than strictly for success. Even if it's a stage in their life, like a ski season after graduation. I remember chatting with a table at my restaraunt job in Colorado. They were in town visiting, and one man was absolutely shocked that I'd graduated from a four-year university that he'd heard of. He went on to bring up how his son studied three different fields in school, and was even more shocked when I said that I had too. After a pause, he asked, "Then what are you doing out here?!" To him, I was a ski bum working in a restaurant. In fact, pretty much everybody in my previous home was very well educated. They'd just made the concious decision to take some time off or make a lifestyle choice, and put health, happiness, nature before traditional career success.

I also remember one time a student came up to me in the grocery store (remember, VERY small town) and looked through my cart! I'd dealt with health questions and shock over the fact that I'm not vegan many times before, but that was definitely a first. I absolutely try to eat healthy and well-balanced most of the time. However, I do have a sweettooth. That doesn't even begin to explain the relationship I have with chocolate. I enjoy wine, coffee, sweet potato fries, and a big ole burger after a day of hiking...  I also love quinoa and salads. I firmly believe in striving for balance. Nothing super drastic is going to be sustainable. Just like I've had periods of getting up at 5am to practice yoga before a day of studying yoga for 8 hours or getting up at 6am to run then surf then eat mangos then do yoga and meditate on the beach AND other periods of staying out dancing until the club shuts down (2am in the States and 5am in Buenos Aires). I LOVE shaking my booty, just as I love yoga and beach running.

             Dancing with the girls 

        Cinco de Mayo celebrations 

               Bridesmaid perks

People aren't as they appear. They have passions, families, vices, pasts, stories... We each have so many roles to play in our lives: mother, wife/partner, friend, daughter, niece, employee/r, yogi, teacher, skier/hiker/runner/surfer, photographer, writer, etc... We are made up of ALL of these facts and roles. That's what makes us so amazing!

                      Auntie role

Dressing up/red dress on the town/could eat sweets for the rest of my life role

           Striving surfer chick role

Friend/backcountry skier/puppy lover role

           Hiker/adventure role

Pura vida!