Q & A With Colleen Cannon

Since founding Women’s Quest and working with a diverse range of women, what do you see as being the biggest “perceived” hurdle to leading a more active/athletic lifestyle? I think the biggest hurdle is time. Women take care of the household, kids, job and typically one or two friends. So they think there is no time to get healthy. Women usually don’t take time for themselves which is a big mistake because when you make time for yourself, you are happier, healthier and ultimately a better mom, partner and friend.

Many husbands send their wives to Women’s Quest because they have said it makes their life easier when the wives develop a healthy daily practice and more balanced life.

Tell us about the benefits of athletic pursuits spilling over into other areas of a woman’s life. There are so many benefits of an active lifestyle. Just moving around makes you feel good and helps spread happy molecules to your family and those around you but I think the main benefit of an active lifestyle is the de-stressing aspect. Being athletic at any level, no matter if you are a beginner or professional athlete just seems to de-stress you. It allows you a little space to relax and breathe and get the oxygen flowing. Once you start moving and your brain gets into the flow you will automatically connect with the bigger picture or some people call it the Zone. This peaceful space is our natural state. When we work out or play we give ourselves the chance to connect again to our true nature of feeling good. We are supposed to feel good and working out helps us remember that we are a spiritual being having this human experience.

Another positive aspect of an athletic lifestyle is it is a perfect venue to train your mind. You learn that you get what you focus on. In life if you can watch your thoughts and keep them moving in a positive framework chances are you will have a positive experience because that is what you are focusing on.

While I was racing I worked a lot on my core beliefs about myself. I learned how to follow my thoughts, visualize and use affirmations to keep myself happy and peppy. All of these Mind Games have helped me with my business as well. You must learn how to flip the crazy life switch from the negative thoughts to the positive thoughts. For instance on the start line of a race I would always freak out and get really bad pre race jitters so I decided that If I sang a song at the start of the races it would help relax me. I picked the Indiana Jones theme song. I would sing the song at every race and it always relaxed me and instead of my focus being on the hard race I would switch my perspective and imagine I was on this amazing adventure where I would ultimately find the missing diamond. Just this little act would help me start the race in a positive framework and ultimately lead me to winning races.

When you have the opportunity to move and wiggle your body around you find out that we have this “One Wild and Precious Life”. This is not a dress rehearsal and so each moment we have the opportunity to learn, love and laugh. Working out connects you to the amazing arena of your mind. It allows you to express yourself in your own unique way without comparing it to another expression. Movement is my prayer and my way of aligning with the divine. It is not a thought out Work Out but it is my chance to play in the body and have fun!

What “essentials” do you emphasize for training and avoiding injury? I think the best way to avoid injury is to warm up and warm down. I had to learn this the hard way. I would time my workouts for distance; I would run a 10-mile loop and I always wanted to go faster on that loop. I thought the way to drop my time was to start out really fast and warm up on the way&I eventually tore my hamstring so I had to learn the hard way that you have to slow down to get faster.

Your warm up should be slow and easy and done at least 15 min if you are running one hour. You can also walk to warm up. I learned this from my coach Phil Maffetone but also from Rob DeCastella an amazing marathon runner. We could only run with Rob on his warm up which was about 30 min for his long runs. He told me that the most important thing about training was to be consistent and that staying healthy would insure that you stay consistent in your training. If you are out for a cold, pulled muscle or other things like that you are not training and therefore losing precious training time. The key is to stay consistent, healthy and happy and then you know you are on the right track. Warming up properly really helps with this.

A good warm up will:

• Increase the blood flow into the muscles, bringing oxygen and nutrients, and remove waste products
• Increase the fats in the blood that are used for muscle energy
• Increase flexibility in all the joints

Another reason I warm up slowly is to be nice to my body. I would feel that it was unfair to make my body jump out of bed and run hard. In college I had to do this for my morning runs because I always wanted to stay in bed and sleep as much as possible. I would sleep in my running clothes and when I heard the people outside my door I would bolt out of bed and join the morning running group. I was 20 years old at the time but over the long haul it would have done damage to my body. I learned about how the blood is going along very happy in other important areas of your body including the nervous system, adrenal glands and intestines. If you divert the blood out of the areas to fast it is like going into shock. I always feel this little alarm going off when this happens. Just recently I was playing games in the park with some kids. We were playing Dr. Dodgeball and I had to sprint around for an hour with out warming up. Bad Idea! I could barely walk the next day.

So even for playtime you should warm up and warm down.

The biggest essential to avoid injury and burn out is to have fun with your life. Not just your training or a word I just hate “working out” but with everything you do. If you are not following your Bliss, then you run the chance of getting injured or burning out. If you are having fun, delighting in the ups and downs of the journey and inspired then you can work and play for hours with out any problems.

Do you have any secrets or advice for a healthy diet or eating plan to stay in shape? I think the best diet is self-acceptance and learning to love and appreciate your body instead of always trying to form it into a magazine look alike. I learned so much about nutrition when I was racing and training. Here are my eating tips:

Eat organic REAL live foods. When the bar craze first came out I was a guinea pig for one of the bars. We ate bars for breakfast, lunch and dinner and were allowed some food along with it. In one week I was so depressed because food was no longer any fun. It was a science project. I started to feel bad along with other symptoms I won’t go into. But what I realized is that the processed bars have all the right ratios and nutrients but they lacked the life force of real food. So, I don’t eat packaged food very often because I want to make sure I get a bite of sunshine with everything I eat.

• Drink lots of good water.
• Making sure you digest your food is also important so eat slowly and share your meals with fun people. Try not to watch T.V. or do anything that upsets you while you eat.
• Eat with the seasons.
• Bless your food.

ABOUT COLLEEN: Colleen Cannon is President, CEO and founder of Women’s Quest, a multisport fitness retreat providing athletic and holistic training for women worldwide. Prior to founding Women’s Quest, Colleen was a professional triathlete competing worldwide with over seventy career victories… {more»}