“Jump over the goose poop”
“Don’t trip on that wonky mound of pavement, no need to look like a jackass right now”
“Why the hell is that car veering towards me?”
“Halfway home, just keep running and let’s wrap this sucker up”
“Ice patch – move over, dry pavement.  Ice patch – move over, dry pavement.  Ice patch…”

Our weather this year has been incredible for exercising outside.  I mean, it’s still Minnesota, so when the temp gets into the 30′s we all rejoice and break out the shorts.  But as of today, we still don’t have any long-term snowpack to speak of.  It’s certainly snowed a few times, but the temp always seems to creep back up there and melt it off within a few days.  Anyway, suffice it to say it’s cold, but not impassable.

After a couple of months of cold-weather sweating, here’s some things I’ve learned:

1.  If you screw up your layering, you are going to feel like shit after your run.  Really.  One day I made a poor jacket decision, the sweat never got wicked away from my other layers, and it took me half a day to warm up from that one.  My holy trifecta: long sleeve wicking shirt, long sleeve cotton shirt, long sleeve lightweight jacket/fleece.  I haven’t found an ideal jacket yet, I can get away with fleece when it’s not snowing or raining, but it still doesn’t get the sweat off me the way I need it to.  Still looking for a solution to this one…

2.  God help you if you forget to bring more than one Kleenex. 

3.  The public works department has bigger things to deal with than getting those sidewalks plowed right away for your run.  Do yourself a favor, pick a route made up of sidestreets with little or no traffic so you aren’t dodging sale-crazed drivers on a busy road.

4.  Eventually, your face and thighs will chill to a level that you can’t feel them.  Go with this.  There’s a really nice moment for me around mile 4 where I just give up on worrying about my legs and kind of separate my body into a head and then everything else under my head.  Having numb legs makes this happen a little faster, the legs keep moving, I get home sooner, and a hot shower ensues.

5.  When you start getting obsessed about every part of your body that doesn’t feel right and you want to just give up and walk, look up.  One day, I looked up and saw there was a huge flock of crows doing crazy group maneuvers.  Another day, I looked up and away from the long path ahead of me – it was starting to psych me out - and saw the way the dark jagged tree lines looked against the blue sky as I ran past them.  I don’t know what it is, maybe I just have ADHD, but taking my brain and focusing it on things that are up can put me in that good place we talked about in #4.  Just make sure you aren’t going to fall into a hole.

 6.  Don’t be a wimp.  Give it two miles, and if you aren’t warmed up by then, pack it in and move south.

I know it sounds like I don’t like being outside in the cold, but I actually really enjoy it.  And I know my family has been enjoying a wife and mother who isn’t ready to choke hold someone because she’s been cooped up for too long.

Well, there’s something really…unsatisfying about picking up where I left off, right in the middle of a stage, so I made the decision to jump ahead to Stage 3 when I go lift later on today.  Part of me knows this may not be the smartest thing to do, but the thought of beginning again and re-doing Stage 1 makes me want to scream.  So I’m going to take it nice and easy, go lighter on the weights than I normally would, and just ease into it like a super-hot bath.   I just know myself well enough to realize that if I don’t start with something new I’m going to get bored and non-committal, and nobody wants that.

Stage 3 should take me about 3 weeks to finish, and I’m doing all the lifting at home in my workout habitat (aka the basement).   Via the ever-useful craigslist, I have something like this for all my weight lifting needs:

Minus the guy.  And the gigantic weights.  Although large weights like that would be nice, since I’m dealing with tons of little 5 and 10 pounders to reach a deadlift weight of 85 pounds or so.  It gets tedious, especially when you’re swapping them on and off from the barbell to the dumbbells over and over again!

Anyway, in stage 3 there are different kinds of bent over rows, squats, swiss ball crunches, plank and cobra holds, bench presses and the like.  I’m looking forward to seeing what kind of result this will have on the running – I remember during the summer I could really tell a difference from doing squats and lunges – and hopefully this training will help me reach the 6.2 mile mark I need to be at for the Polar dash in a few weeks (without being totally wiped out!).

Today, these pictures are inspiring.

I really like this last one.  A lot.

I’m going to be running a 10k race in four weeks.

This morning was the morning that I lay in bed and made the connection that the race I had signed up for was no longer a floaty non-specific goal. Oh, it’s called a Polar Dash…isn’t that charming?  What a great thing to do sometime this winter!  It will get me some nice fresh air when I get bored of being inside, I had thought. 

But now the 10k was very present, very holy-shit-this-just-got-real.   I have four weeks to get it together for the race.  In January.  In Minnesota.  How had this all happened?  What was I thinking?  Had someone slipped me a drug at the exact moment that I was wandering around Facebook and saw my cousin’s announcement of  “Just signed up for the Monster Dash Series for 2012!”  and though Yeah!  That’s it!   Her posting had intrigued me, and I did some more digging on the  Team Ortho Monster Series website. I was blown away by the idea of signing up for a series of races that would take me through almost an entire year of goals to reach and training to keep me occupied.  I thought Whoa, what is this? A race series?  With tons of swag?  And medals? 

As a person who's never gotten any kind of sporting medals, these are my catnip.

I’m all over this, this is my wintertime thing.  Sign me up. 

And they did.  Or rather, I did, right after I gave them my credit card number. 

Now, before this whole thing starts to spiral out of control into a regret tailspin, let me just say:  I would have wanted to run in these races anyway when they came up on the calendar.  I would have seen the announcements in my email, and gone and registered for them at $35-$40 a pop like everyone else.  So it really didn’t cost me any more to sign up for all of them at once (and let’s not forget there are medals!  The lucite case only comes with the race series!  And the gear!  Don’t forget the gear!), it was just kind of a serious hit up front.

I’m not really sure what possessed me to do it.  It could be that it  happened right around Black Friday and I was itching to spend.  It could be because I had finished my second 5k with a slight improvement in time and I was feeling kind of like Yeah, things are just getting better and better…I should just keep giving myself big goals to reach, because obviously I can do anything I set my mind to.  Which, in theory, seems like a healthy thing to tell yourself – until you realize that your goals are fast approaching, the pay-up or shut-up phase has arrived, and you had better get your ass in gear. 

I mean, look at the swag they’re giving out!  Can you blame me?

So What do you Get? Well besides the bragging rights of finishing a fantastic race, Team Ortho Foundation prides itself on having great gear that we give to our participants. Some items you will receive early, but most you will get at the specific event (see Series SWAG Schedule below).2012 Event Gear for all race participants: Polar Dash - polar fleece (unisex), medal, chip-timed for 10K and Half Marathon Get Lucky — full zip hoodie (men’s & women’s sizing), medal, chip-timed Minneapolis Marathon—performance shirt (men’s and women’s cut) Minneapolis Duathlon — Bike Jersey Monster Dash— Unisex Monster Dash shirt for 5K & medal ; Male/Female-cut 1/2 zip jacket for the Half Marathon and 10 MIle, plus a finisher’s medal.Plus Exclusive Series SWAG! People who sign up for the series get an added bonus:  the choice of a race series jacket or a Lucite display for your your 2012 medals.

I ended up signing up the next 10 months of my fitness life to:

10k Polar Dash, Jan 1st

7k Get Lucky!, March 17th

Minneapolis Half Marathon (Yep.  13.1 miles.), June 3rd

Minneapolis Duathlon, August 26th (run 5k, bike 18 miles, run 5k.  I’m looking for relay team members for this one…I haven’t quite reached this level of self-delusion yet)

10 mile Twin Cities Monster Dash, October 29th (The promo trailer for this one is pretty cool, it may have been one of those things that directed my mouse to the Register Here tab)

Alright, so I spent a little time in denial earlier today.  But now I’ve flown through the other phases and gotten right to Acceptance!  I have four weeks to get myself in decent condition to run 6.2 miles without hurting or embarrassing myself.  It’s not completely far-fetched, I have done a couple 5k’s, and I have done a handful of five mile runs around the neighborhood.  But I’ve been pretty negligent on the cross-training front, and the losing-weight-eating-healthy front. 

So. 

It’s time to get serious now.  No more Yep, I’m totally going to eat all that pizza on my plate, I’m running, it’s fine! 

No more  Hey. I’m running.  I don’t want to wear myself out by weight lifting, too!  And adding yoga?  What am I, a machine?

I spent money on this race series, more than I really should have (right before Christmas), and it would be a disgusting waste to half-ass my way through all of them just because it’s easier to sit, and eat, and let myself be happy with only achieving as much as I’ve already done.   I’m pretty sure I can do more, I can be stronger, I can run with fewer walk-breaks, I can finish these races in a way that I know I’ve done the best I can do at this point in my fitness life.

I think I might need to make a training calendar.

Every once in a while, I get too caught up in going faster or farther, and I begin to lose the spark I had when I was first beginning to run.  It starts to feel like a job; and not only that, it starts to feel like a job I am not very well qualified for.

When those times come, and I begin to think about giving up the whole sport altogether, some little voice reminds me that it might be time to go somewhere…unpaved.  And I get in my car, and I head to Lebanon Hills Regional Park to get back to the center of things.

Today was one of the last days in Minnesota when I could run outside before the snow comes, and when I found myself with a couple of hours without children or errands, I changed into my gear and got myself ready for a nice long run in the woods.  The temps here are in the 30′s, so I wear a long-sleeved tech shirt with a cotton T over it (to wick away sweat and keep me drier), and a light windbreaker over it.  I don’t go out anymore without my hat, and usually I add an ear-covering headband for good measure.

One of the really fantastic things about this park is that it is full of trails (and maps), so you can decide how energetic you feel each time you come and modify your distance.  Feeling kind of worn-out?  One lap around Jensen lake is about 2 miles.  Don’t want to do laps?  There is a path out and back that winds through a series of small lakes that will run about 4 miles.  Feeling really intense?  You could find trails to run on without repeating your path for 15 or 20 miles.  I haven’t quite worked up to that level, but give me time!

I recently finished a 5k in White Bear Lake called Fast Before the Feast – an event that is put on by Tri-Fitness, and after donating my bag of groceries to the local food shelf I found out that I had won some super awesome K-Swiss Trail runners in a drawing!  I am generally not one of those people who wins things constantly, so I was pretty stoked about the whole thing   After I went in to the store to claim them, I found out that they are great for trails and for snow, so I’m looking forward to using them when the weather turns…challenging.  So today was the inaugural run with the trail shoes, and I’m happy to report that they fit amazingly.  No blisters, no weird rubbing pain, nothing but excellent grip on those gravelly paths.  If anyone out there likes to run on dirt, I can’t say enough good things about them!  I also can’t say enough good things about Tri-Fitness’s store.  Not only do they have great drawing prizes (thanks again, TF!), I didn’t feel like a total imposter walking in and looking at running gear.  My experiences thus far in the fitness store world haven’t been what I would call welcoming (to my 30 something non-buff self), so I was really grateful that the person who was helping me actually looked me in the eye and gave me genuine tips for improving my running rather than just writing me off as another jogging suburbanite housewife.  Even though I live 30 minutes from the store, I’ll probably get my running shoes from them for as long as I live here.  I’m not getting anything out of recommending them, I just know how disheartening it can be to have a salesperson treat you like you are a waste of the time they could be spending with “real athletes”.  So thumbs up, Tri-Fitness.

Look, here’s the shoes in field action!

Anyway, I knew that if I wanted to be able to enjoy the path before it gets itself covered in snow, today was the day.  I headed out, knowing that I wanted to cover about 5 miles and get around one of the larger lakes.  There are some serious hills out here, more of the constant up-and-down variety, and less of the gently rolling kind.  So my pace was slower than normal, but I looked at it as strength training   (and stopping to take pictures wasn’t really helping either).

I really love running on dirt trails more than anything else.  Treadmills remind me of that summer that I did temp work stuffing envelopes, and running on sidewalks near busy road puts stress knots in my shoulders.  To get outside, away from all the traffic and noise and crowds, that is the one place where I really feel alive and awake.

I love the patches of cattails by the water, the changes the trail makes as it goes from sand to gravel to dirt, and looking out for roots and holes to jump over.  I love that every person whose path I cross seems just as pleased as I am to be there, like we are all pretty happy with ourselves for finding this place and making the time just to be there at that moment.

I love that there are patches of path that have been made into bridges, as a safeguard against flooding lakes.  The curving lines of the paths against the jagged lines of the trees is something that I don’t think I will ever grow tired of seeing as I come around a bend.

Away from the housing developments and suburbs, you can actually see what nature looks like as the seasons change in a big-picture sort of way.  When I first began to run here in the summer, the lakes were full of ducks and zipping dragonflies, and now there are mounds of beaver dams all along the shoreline.

Even though the bright colors of fall are gone now, I still think it’s so beautiful out here.  Things never look in pictures the way they do in real life, and that is certainly true in this case.  I wish I had the stamina and the knees to be out here every day, but I guess I feel happy just knowing that I will be able to come here as long as I decide to keep exercising outdoors.

There is a bridge about 3 miles into this run, and the first time I ever crossed it I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it to the other side.  There are beams missing, and neither the beginning nor the end of the bridge actually touch the ground – it becomes a kind of stunted diving board that you jump over, hoping that today won’t be the day that the sucker finally snaps.  It’s bowed and uneven, and it creaks as I cross it.  Even though I am pretty sure that I will end up falling through one of these days, I still smile when I see it.  I’m not sure why.

I hope that there are places that you can go to feel happy and alive, especially when you are making the time to exercise.  It shouldn’t feel like a job, or a punishment, no matter what it is you like to do.

I can’t wait to get out here again, even after the snow comes.

I was already mostly on board with the vegan thing as it was, what with my lactose/gluten intolerances, my newly vegetarian husband, and the piles of books I had been checking out from the library about making myself into the healthiest person on the planet.  From Eat Right for Your Type to Sugar-Busters, I began collecting enough food information that I could tinker and toy with my diet for the rest of my life.

The piles of books by my bed can make walking in the dark challenging

*With my A negative blood type, meat and dairy were making me sick – I should be a vegetarian.

*Warm lemon water in the morning would clean out my kidneys.

*Pineapple would speed up my metabolism.

*I was a sugar addict who was totally enslaved to the roller coaster that was my blood-glucose level.

*My lack of a gallbladder meant that high fat foods needed to be given up for good unless I wanted to have shooting abdominal pains for a few hours.

*My TMJ muscle spasms were making me re-think the amount of coffee and chocolate I was eating each day.

I found there was a book for every ailment I had, every kind of food adaptation I wanted to make, and every mood I was in.  There were unlimited amounts of things to learn, and I spent a lot of my time trying most of them out.

But really, when it was all boiled down, what I really learned from reading all those books and watching all those films is this: if you have enough time and are looking for a project to consume lots of mental energy, start looking into improving your diet.  It’s a never-ending balancing act between knowing things and actually doing things, with a dash of emotional attachment sprinkled on top.   For most people, women especially, you can’t usually just say “Eat the correct foods and be nourished”.  This whole dance begins between you and your self-esteem, and deprivation, and how you feel about your worth, and the always present shame spiral that comes from not following your new plan to a T.  It can be very binding, if you let yourself get really bogged down in the “rules”.  I had to go all the way down that road to realize it was probably better to get off of it altogether and give myself a giant break.

So anyway, all of this background is to say that I have been a target audience member for healthy eating styles for a hell of a long time, and I while I was open to learning about the benefits of juicing, I was reluctant to put my all behind another fad that would be unsustainable.

I watched the movie that night, and it was pretty good.  I got the message loud and clear, I believed in all the things that Joe Cross was doing, and I even called my mother to ask her if she still had her juicer stashed in the back of her cupboard.  There were parts of the movie that were pretty heavy on the cheese factor, it was a little too fast and free with the cartoon depictions (a la Super Size Me), but he seemed really sincere and I could identify with his desire to be healthy and free of his medical ailments.  He seemed to be genuine in his desire to make people healthier, and the premise of the vegan eating style made sense to me.  It essentially boils down to eating all fruits and vegetables (around a 70-30 veggie-to-fruit ratio), mostly from juices.  He spent the entire documentary drinking only juices for 60 days, and of course lost a shit-ton of weight.  After looking at his website, it looks like he does have plans for people who aren’t going to be on it for so long, and for people who want to eat actual food along with the juices.

So why am I so hesitant?  The juicer is here, mom brought it over and we tried it out.   I found out that carrot juice really stains.

Maybe it’s because the holidays are coming, and we all know it’s a dumb-ass move to diet around the holidays.  Maybe it’s because I know I will get through the “reboot” just fine, but I’m worried about what kind of crazy behavior I will have once it’s over.  Somehow I see myself diving into a pile of donuts – not even the gluten-free kind.  From the posts of the people on the reboot, they say all the food cravings end after 4 days, and that they have never felt so in control of their eating.  Maybe that’s the part that’s holding me back…it’s all starting to lean a little too closely to eating disorder-ville for my comfort.  Am I crazy for thinking that?  I mean, on the one hand, I can totally understand the correctness of eating just fruits and veggies for a short period of time to clean out your body and help get rid of all the junk we have clogged up in our systems.  But I’m getting a little hung up on the idea that they should be juiced only.  Why am I throwing away all the fiber and cellulose that is left in the bottom of my juicer bin?

Maybe I am laying some of my own food struggles on this movie, and it really has nothing to do with this guy’s food plan.  There was a scene where he is maybe a week in to the juicing plan, and he goes into a pizzeria.  He stands in the doorway, juice in hand, and talks about the smells of the pizza shop – the dough, the cheese, the meats – with a wistful look on his face.  You can tell he is longing for a slice.  He finally says, “I better get out of here”, and leaves.  That scene may as well have come from the 18,000 diets I have put myself on, and unhealthy way that I treated myself all those years, the cycle of deprivation followed by bingeing.  But that was just me, my way of making food an emotional issue, and it really has nothing to do with this man or his movie.

Maybe I will try adding juices into my diet, for a meal a day.  Maybe I can try to go on a full reboot once the holidays are over.  In the meantime, I probably just need to get back to working on treating my body well – it wasn’t a pretty sight around here over Halloween.   Besides, if I never started using the juicer, after all, I would never have known that I really like carrot juice with fresh ginger and a squirt of lemon.  It can’t be that bad.

I’m not really sure what happened, but I seem to be over it now.  Maybe it was running in a real race and seeing that it wasn’t completely populated with men who seemed to be made up of only muscle and nylon shorts.  Maybe it was the bit of weight I lost and realizing I look kind of okay in my lycra running pants (and it didn’t hurt that my husband was totally okay with having me wear them around the house).  Maybe it was just that I liked being out there so much that I figured anyone who was going to judge my-less-than-perfect body could just suck it.  Accomplishing something, even just one of my regular weekly runs, is a real boost to anyone’s day.  So what if there are still jiggly parts of me on display for all the cars passing by?  I think I managed to get over being self-conscious because I was running, and they were riding.  In something with an engine.  And protective windows.  And a heater.

No matter how many parts of me have more jiggle than firm muscle, I’m still out there dealing with the wind pushing me back, the sun shining in my eyes, my stash of kleenex balled up in my shirt pocket, and getting up and over those damn hills.  So now when they drive by, instead of imagining all the shitty things I used to think they were thinking about me, I imagine they are thinking God, it’s cold out today. That is a really big hill.  I wonder if she has been running up the whole thing?

And yes.  Yes I have.

On the day of the race I woke up at 6:30 and began to get ready to make the drive into St Paul MN for the Twin Cities Marathon 5K.  I can’t even really believe I was able to sleep the night before…I was really wound up and there was no one else in the house to tell me to calm the hell down.  But I was nervous – It would be my first time running in a timed race, and really, my first time running with other people!

Knowing my list-making, organizing Virgo self the way I do, I spent some time the night before gathering all my bits together in an effort to reassure myself it wasn’t going to be a free for all anxiety-fest in the morning.   The chip was attached to my shoe, my money and car key were safely in a clip-on pocket, and I had my race number and clothes ready for the next day.

My first race number!

I also managed to spend money on things that may or may not have helped me…muscle milk, gatorade for before and after, and a some kind of energy bar.  My husband laughed at me when he saw my stash in the fridge.  But I felt prepared!  I read somewhere that caffeine can help before a race, so I made myself some (even though I had quit the stuff a month ago).  I drove into the city, and thank god I got there early – the roads were all roped off and my planned driving route was kaput.  I drove around, talking to myself in slight anxiety, and then found a spot fairly close to the capital where we were starting off.  After I parked and started to walk over, I felt better.  Energetic!  I had done everything I could do (aside from training more) to get ready for this run, and now I just wanted to get my number attached to my shirt and get running!

I met my friend, and we pinned numbers on each other, checked our coats (it was chilly, really chilly that morning) and got in the middle of the large crowd at the race start.  It was great being in the center of all these people!  Everyone was excited and smiling, there were all ages  and sizes of people waiting to run, and there was a real community feeling going around.  My parents had watched my kids the night before, and they were going to be waiting for me at the finish line; I couldn’t wait to get there and see my boy’s faces.  Honestly, one of the greatest rewards in running for me (after the sense of accomplishment when I get through a workout) is to have my kids see me working hard and training.  It means a lot that they are proud of me and getting to see the results of physical work.

Anyway, the race itself went smoothly.  I ended up being somewhere in the middle of the group – not last, as I had feared   The feeling I had while running it was that it seemed to take forever and it also seemed to go by so fast.  I think I mostly couldn’t wait to cross my first finish line and see all of those people waiting for us.  The encouragement from other runners and the people watching from the sidewalks was really motivational foe me, it helped me more than they probably knew.  I remember one women in particular, she yelled out “GO Addidas!” (it was written on my shirt), and I swear that helped me keep up for the next mile and a half.  It’s probably a little stupid, but I still think of that sometimes when my motivation is gone and I just want to walk my way home and it gets me to go a little further than I thought I could.

I came into view of the finish line, it was a fantastic downhill run straight towards the capital, and I tried to appreciate every stride I took to get there.  I heard people clapping and cheering, there was music from the loudspeakers and the group of nearby drummers, and then there was the blue banner that read FINISH!  I crossed it, looked around, and saw my family waiting for me.  It was fantastic!  A moment I will remember always as my first race.  I finished it in 39 minutes, much faster than I thought I would considering my nerves and the big hills.  The runs that I had done at home only took me 3 miles, and they nearly always took me 40-45 minutes to finish.  So I was really happy with my time, and so glad that I finished it running and un-injured.

I’m totally addicted, I can’t wait to do another one.

Fall is my favorite time of year, and this one has been great for me to practice my running.  In Minnesota, we can have really short fall seasons, where cool dry weather is in and out so fast you’d swear it went from being 85 degrees to snowing in one week.  But this year, we’ve been blessed with a really mild fall, full of sunny 60 degree days.  I am also feeling really thankful that I am able to have a couple of days each week where each of my kids is in school at the same time so I can get some runs in without having to jockey around babysitters or deal with my husband’s crazy work schedule.

Yes, Monday and Wednesday mornings are my favorite times this year…I get the kids off to school and preschool, and I have two and a half hours to myself to run, shower, and have a quick snack.  Love it!  Right now I’m averaging about 3.5 to 4 miles per run, and it takes me between 40 and 55 minutes.  A lot of it depends on where I run.  Here in the south of MN, there are a TON of hills.  When I run near my home, I spend a half mile just getting up a huge hill so I can run back down the next half mile; it goes on like that the whole run.  I kind of love it though!

One of the things I have learned about myself is that I’m going to be more motivated and energized to do something if it seems hard or there is a real physical challenge involved.  That’s one of the reasons I can’t deal with treadmills.  I mean, treadmills can be a great workout tool, I know you can really work the crap out of yourself.  But the fact is…you are in control of how hard it is.  If it gets to be too much, you can lower the incline or slow down the pace.  If I’m outside running, and I’ve only gone halfway and I’m feeling tired, that’s just too bad – I’m going to have to get back somehow!  Today for example, it was really chilly and windy.  I haven’t gotten any running pants yet, so I’m still wearing my thin wicking capris.  I had a couple of long shirts on, a hat, and some gloves, but MAN I was chilly.  I would get to the top of a hill, the wind would be blowing right through my hat into my ears, and I thought “Well, the only way to get out of this is to run faster.  This is an endurance run!”, and it was one of my best running times.  I even added a couple of blocks since I was feeling pretty strong!  But I know that soon I’m going to have to invest in some warmer pants – I’m planning on running outside all winter.  I love finding things to do in the winter, I get really antsy and pent-up if I just stay in all the time and try to deal with bored kids.  So this year I’m really excited, this will be my first running winter!  I need to do some research and figure out what to buy.  I know I need a better hat, and some wool socks, and lined pants.  I think I’m going to be spending some dough at our local Sports store very soon!

I’m planning on doing more 5k’s this winter, we have one in the Twin Cities on Thanksgiving and one on Valentine’s, and I’m doing both of those.  I’m excited!

My weight lifting has fallen behind a little bit…I need to get back on the plan.  I was doing weights three days a week and running three days a week with a rest day thrown in, but lately it’s been just the running and resting.  I guess I needed a break!

When my boys went back to school, my sickness karma kicked in and decided it was time to make up for all those months that I enjoyed being cold-free during the summer.  It was a doozy of an illness, too!  Full on hacking cough,

This is how my soul felt.

fever, stuffed nose, the works.  I totally lost the ability to smell or taste, which was not the end of the world, but made cooking food edible for others a challenge.

It also totally halted my active life.  No lifting, running, yoga (upside down poses sounded like torture) for a week and a half.  I had just finished Stage 1 of

NROLFW, and even though I was excited to get going on a new stage – begone prone jackknife! -, it just wasn’t going to happen.  So I laid down a lot, become friends with my heating pad and pillow, and caught up on missed episodes of Sons of Anarchy.

Just as I was coming out of this cold-stupor, a friend of mine asked me to run with her in the Twin Cities Marathon 5k, coming up on October 1st.  I said “Yes!  That sounds great!”, and thought it would be a good motivator to get me up and off the couch again.  What I didn’t factor in was how close it was to October 1st.  You see, one of the things about being a (mostly) stay at home mom is that you shed the need to stay on top of things like dates and calendars – unless it has something to do with your kids needing to bring something to school.   So in my head I felt like it was still weeks away from the 5k, but in real-time it was only about 10 days away.  Ten days away after a long sickness and an interruption to my exercise program.  But I didn’t really put together how far behind I was until I went for my first post-cold run.  Let’s just say, it was a wake up call to how tired I had gotten and how quickly things can start to go backwards when you take a workout break.

Fast forward a week, and tomorrow is the big day!  I’ve been running every other day, about three miles each time, and I started Stage 2 of NROLFW.  The runs have been getting better and better, but I really wish I had another week to get myself comfortable.  As of yesterday, I’m averaging about 14 minutes a mile, with a walking break thrown in about every three-quarter mile.  I’m hoping to be able to do the 5k in around 40-45 minutes, but I’m nervous!  It’s going to be hilly, it’s near our State Capital and I haven’t run this course before.  In fact, I’ve never run in any event before!  I totally have pre-event jitters (What if I can’t find parking? What if I forget my papers? What if I am late/can’t find it/get lost/wear the wrong clothes/etc/etc/etc).

 I’m starting to remember this feeling, it’s pretty similar to the one that sat like a brick in my stomach as a teenager in junior high gym class (performance/body anxiety and just hoping to god that I don’t come in last).  I realize that this line of thinking is really un-productive, and so I’ve been countering it with thoughts like:

• I’ve never done anything like this before;  just by signing up and showing up to run I have accomplished something.
• I never thought I could run at all, much less in an actual event, and doing this 5k is just the beginning of my fitness future.
• As long as I finish the race upright, and feeling like I enjoyed challenging myself, it has been a huge success.

And finally, this one (a little less optimistic, but still helpful):

• Just assume now that I will be last.  Get over the fear of it, and if there is any other result besides coming in last, it will be like a special bonus.
  

  I'll be part of this crowd tomorrow!

I’ve been reading 5k running books.  It may not have been the best plan, because it gave me a clearer picture on how far behind in training I am, but it did teach me some important tips for tomorrow.

1. Don’t eat anything too heavy the night before.  It sits in your stomach for a half day, and who wants that for a morning run?
2. Eat 2 hours before you run, but nothing too fatty or multi-grainy.  I’m thinking a small cup of coffee, a banana and maybe some toast.
3. Bring some kind of replenishing drink, a protein and a carb to eat after it’s over.
4. Just try to have fun and remember it’s my first time!

I hope it goes well. 

More than that, I hope I can chill out and just have a good time.  I signed up for this because it sounded fun and challenging, not because I thought I needed some special torture in my life.  8th grade gym class is over, and this is something I can do.  I got this.

This may be how I feel on the inside...but yeah, I didn't turn out to be that kind of girl.

It seems as thought I have been forever cast as the suburban friend to all nice hipsters and punks that cross my path, and I’m trying to learn to be cool with that instead of wishing I was a different kind of person. <Sigh.> 

 Anyway, this friend had mentioned to me that she was part of a group of people who met monthly and had entire yoga classes outside in really public areas of the twin cities – parks, busy streets downtown, zoos, anywhere!   They were called Gorilla Yogis, and the next meetup was in July at a very busy public park.  I immediately got all excited and wanted to jump right on that bandwagon – I love all these things! Yoga AND being outdoors AND non-mainstream activities?? I’m there.  But then I wondered….Am I going to feel secure enough to get out there in my spandex and join in with people who were probably going to be a lot more fit than me?  My old junior high gym class insecurities popped up, and my ”doing physical things in front of people who are thinner than me” monster who has been following me since I was 13 woke up.  I suddenly felt disappointed and kind of tired. 

I thought about it for a few more days, and I realized that one of the major things I really dig about yoga is the ability to let my body dictate how far into the practice I am able to get.  That is to say, everyone who was going be at an event playing up how great yoga is was going to be working at their own pace and doing things as they could – it is a practice that centers on the self and your own improvements after all.   Also, I figured it was going to be pretty hard for anyone to be judgy or snooty when we all have our asses up in the air doing our best downward dog. So why not?  I decided to go, and my friend and I showed up on the day of the event with our yoga mats, our water bottles, and yes, our spandex. 

It was great.   The energy of the crowd was more focused on having fun and doing fantastic yoga in front of the packs of families and seniors walking by than it was on ranking their fellow yogis on how good or bad they looked or practiced.  It was, in fact, so supportive that I didn’t even get self-conscious when people would stop on the sidewalk and take pictures of us, or when old men would sit on park benches and watch the group of 50 or so people all standing with their hands in prayer pose.  I was good!  I felt happy to be there, and glad I knew how to do most of the poses from my workouts at home.

That is, until I did something crazy to my right leg.

I was happily moving from pose to pose, enjoying my flexibility and the camaraderie of group yoga, when something inside my hip got very mad and let me know about it.  Here, this is a picture of me at the event:

No.  Not the super fit woman in black leading the class.  Look again.

Yes, there I am in all my pink and black outdoor-yogi glory.  This pic was pre-injury, and I’m looking pretty relaxed and flexible here.

10 minutes later, as I was transitioning into Warrior 2 position, there was a loud and concerning *POP* that came from my right hip joint and I’m pretty sure I made a noise like “aaahck”.  Thank goodness I had already made it into the next pose, the shock of whatever my body had just done left me standing there with my arms spread out thinking “I wonder if I’m going to be able to stand up straight with everyone else when it’s time to move?”.  Luckily, I did manage myself out of the spread-legged pose as the class moved into a standing forward fall.  I had no idea what could have made the horrible sound… my hip joint? A tendon? A ligament? A hamstring? And why the pop?  I still have no idea.  But I do know that once the class was over and I was relaxing on my friend’s couch a few hours later, I was considerably more sore and stiff and sporting a noticeable limp when I got up to go home.  Pretty hot.

So now here I am, a month and a half later, and I am really missing my yoga!  I have tried to coax my body into it slowly by breaking out an old favorite yoga DVD, but that right hamstring is having nothing to do with it.  My left leg, no problem!  I can stretch and bend and lunge all day long.  But that right one…well, she’s still mad at me for trying to do yoga on lumpy grass and overextending myself.  I can’t decide if it’s better for me to try to stretch it slowly and work my way back into it, or leave it the hell alone and just focus on the nice easy movements that come with running.  It appears that moving my leg forward and backwards = no problem; moving in any sort of leg spreading/triangle shaped pose = massive ouches.   Maybe pilates is the answer!  I remember a nice stretchy pilates band in my workout room, that sounds just about perfect for a gimpy leg.   Hmmm…

There is another Gorilla Yogi event coming up, and I hope I will be able to go.  But if not, I can’t wait until next spring when I can start it all over again.  If things go as planned, I will be a smaller version of myself and I will try to remember to take things nice and easy so as never to hear a horrible pop coming from any part of me again.