To Endure Injury

The life of an endurance athlete can be excruciatingly difficult but not for the reasons most people would think.  It isn’t because of the long hours spent covering insane distances.  It isn’t because many of us have to wake before dawn to put in those miles.  It isn’t even the pain from the overuse injuries we endure.  No, these are things we can handle.  They are par for the course, worn as badges of honor by endurance athletes.

The difficult part, the part that guts every endurance athlete without exception, is the forced rest – the days, weeks and sometimes even months following an injury when we are told we cannot run, bike or even swim.  These are the days when we wish we had never found the sport.  Because knowing how great it feels to be out there on those roads before most people are even out of bed, knowing how incredible it feels to cross that finish line after running fifty miles, knowing how great it feels to push ourselves beyond the limit, and missing those moments is absolutely gut wrenching.

And knowing that for the most part it was something we could have prevented had we just listened to our bodies, makes it all the more difficult.  As endurance athletes, we often know when an injury is coming before it is even a niggle.  We feel a twinge in the knee or the foot and we can tell you which tendon that is.  But we justify.  “It’s just that my right hip is a little sore so I am compensating. If I concentrate, I can strike just right from now on and that left ankle won’t be a problem.”  Or, “No, it’s not really an injury.  I can run through this.”

The problem is that we can run through it.  We have built a pain threshold that most people can’t understand and often we can run through the pain, sometimes to a point where it seems to disappear completely.  To be fair, half of the time, we are making the right decision.  Half of the time, we can work on our form and keep an injury from fully developing, or we can keep running, warm the muscle up and never feel the pain again.  But when we are facing an actual injury, it is hard to give ourselves a break.  We kick ourselves for not listening to our bodies at the first sign.  We kick ourselves for not calling the doctor and getting it checked out.

When we are injured, everything we know about ourselves as endurance athletes is questioned.  Maybe we are not as strong as we thought we were. Maybe we will not be able to get back into condition like we have in the past.  And the worse, maybe we were just being a baby.  Maybe the pain isn’t quite as bad as we thought.

This is the one that does us in.  This is the one that has us putting the supportive boot aside and just testing ourselves a little to see if we can run. And this is the decision that takes us from three weeks without running to six weeks without running.  We are endurance athletes.  We push ourselves.  It is not just what we do, but who we are.

As I sit here writing this, my right foot, securely ensconced in a protective boot, is propped carefully on the stool under my desk.  A bottle of anti-inflammatory and a large glass of water sits beside my computer.  Today, I am lucky.  Today, the pain in my foot is horrendous.  I tell you, as only an endurance athlete can, that the pain is a good thing because today is a speed workout day.  Today is an important run in my marathon schedule and diagnosis or not, without the pain, I know the temptation to test the foot would be too strong.  I know that the minute the pain stops I will start mourning the marathon that I am sure to miss while this foot heals.  And I know that instead of remembering that rest and recovery is my job right now, I will remember the joy of being on the roads, the joy of losing myself in the sound of my feet slapping the pavement and the joy of completing another marathon.

Being an endurance athlete is difficult but it is what I have chosen to do.  So today I remind myself, as I sit here twitching with the desire to be out there doing what I do, that it is through our struggles that we discover our strengths.  And so, I struggle with this enforced rest.  I am an endurance athlete and I will endure.

Why

Lately, I have found myself questioning the marathon.  Why do I bother?  I may be getting faster but I have still not broken four hours and even after I finally I do, I still have ten minutes to cut in order to qualify for Boston.  Boston has always been my aim and if that isn’t going to happen, maybe I should just hang up my shoes. Why should I keep putting myself through the stress of training?

This weekend, I found my answer.  For three years my daughter and I have made an hour long drive to Olympic Development soccer tryouts.  Over the years, Meg has put every ounce of herself into the tryouts only to be cut on the third day.  This year as tryouts approached, I found myself dragging my feet.  I knew the registration was open and I was well aware that she would want to tryout.  But personally I dreaded it.  It wasn’t the two hours spent in the car each day or the hour and a half spent standing in the cold watching my daughter play her heart out.  It was the disappointment I have witnessed as she looked carefully through the call back numbers and didn’t see hers.  It was the look on her face the next time she was on a soccer pitch.  A look that told me she wondered whether she was good enough to play at all.  There was a part of me that hoped she would change her mind.  She would decide not to go.  She would not have to face the disappointment again.

Still, as the day approached, she made her way to the computer and found the tryout times.  She told her club coach she wouldn’t be at practices because she would be at ODP tryouts.  And she made it clear to me that it was important to her.  As in years past, everyone showed their confidence in her.  “This is the year, girl.  This is the year you make the team.”  And I cringed as I wondered how high up they would push her and how much harder that would make the fall at the end.

But this is her dream.  She believes she will play on the US Women’s Soccer team. It is all she wants.  If you ask a hundred people who know her what her favorite thing in the world is, you will get only one answer, “Soccer.”  The walls of her room are covered in soccer posters.  She dresses for soccer every day, whether she has practice or not, just in case the opportunity to play should arise.  She spends hours of her week thinking of new plays for her team or new moves she might try.

I sat in my warm car on Sunday afternoon and watched out the windshield as Meg ran across the field in pouring rain and thirty five degree temperatures.  I watched as she hopped up and down before the scrimmages began, trying to stay warm, as she used every move she has ever been taught on the soccer pitch, as she offered a hand to the player who fell in the middle of play and even as she stayed on the pitch juggling the ball and practicing her moves during the water breaks.  I watched her playing and realized that that is what it is that she loves – the playing.  When she arrived back in my car every layer of clothing was soaked through, but she had a smile bigger than the Cheshire cat’s.  She had had a blast.  I asked how she played.  She didn’t answer with her thoughts on her chances.  Instead, she told me about the rain and the girls, the coaches and the goals.

Today was the last day of open tryouts.  The cut sheet will go up later this evening and my heart is in my throat as I wait.  Megan keeps checking the computer screen in hopes that this will be her year.  I hope beyond hope that she will make it but tonight I know that it doesn’t matter.  If she doesn’t make it she will be back next year and the one after that, if that is what it takes.  I realized while watching this beautiful girl playing in the freezing rain that it isn’t just about a dream to make the Olympic Team.  It isn’t just about the chance to see if she is good enough.  It is about the moments on the field, every moment on the field.  It is about the joy of the game.

As a mom, there are hundreds of lessons I try to teach my children.  Once in a while though, the shoe is on the other foot.    Seeing Meg’s love for the game, with or without the outcome she hopes for, reminds me of why it is I go out there.  Why it is that after twelve marathons without qualifying for Boston, I still find myself at the starting line each year.  Watching Meg has helped me to recognize the love I hold for my sport.  So, yes, I will sign up for the next marathon.  Maybe I will qualify for Boston this time, maybe I won’t, but now I know, it really doesn’t matter.  I love to run.  That is why I do it.  The rest is just icing on the cake.

Front Runner For the Day

I have run in the front of the pack in plenty of races.  I have even crossed the finish line first in a couple of races.  Unfortunately though this has only happened in my nightmares.

The nightmare always starts the same way.  I am running in the middle of the pack when I spot the row of port-a-potties and decide to make a stop.  And thus the nightmare truly begins.  I come out of the port-a-potty to find no runners, spectators or volunteers any where.  Figuring I must have been further back in the pack than I had thought, I start running in the direction the race had been heading.  That is when I realize I have five choices.  The road splits like the railway exchanges on my son’s Thomas train table.   I have to make a choice.  As I make my way through a grandmother’s kitchen, climb up a ladder into the attic and have to slide down a twisty slide to get back to the race course, it becomes apparent that I have made the wrong choice.  This obstacle course goes on so long I am completely surprised to find spectators still lining the course leading to the finish cheering wildly for me, the last runner.  I know that I said the nightmare had started earlier, but as I cross the finish line and photographers snap my picture and Michael Jackson steps up to hand me the winner’s check I realize it has only just begun.  Sometimes it seems to go on for days as I try to explain that I didn’t really win the race, I had gotten lost along the course and must have taken what turned out to be a very convoluted shortcut.  Unfortunately, no one listens.  Instead, the crowd starts accusing me of being the next Rosie Ruiz.   The good news is I do eventually wake up from this dream and I am always grateful that it was just a dream.

So, earlier this year, when I found myself leading the pack of our local half marathon, I was very careful to watch for the arrows on the road, not head through any doors or stop at any port-a-potties.  I was also very careful to savor the experience.  With nobody in front of me to follow and no feet coming up behind, I felt as though I had the course to myself.  The water stops were a smorgasbord of beverages and the cheers were all for me.  I waved at the children and thanked the police officers along the route for being out so early on a cold, wet Sunday morning and I tried to stay focused on running a good race.  About twenty minutes after the turn around on the out and back course, I started seeing the other runners.  Some, clad in USNA shorts and tank tops, ignored me as they focused on completing their race but others looked at my quizzically, as though questioning my position in the race.  As I made my way further back along the course, some started to comment on how fast I was running, how I was the first one they had seen.  I started hearing “Wow, she must have headed out really fast.”  This is when it became apparent to me that some of those who were behind me didn’t realize I had started with the one hour early start.

Yes, I was leading the race but only because the other early starters expected to take several hours to finish the course and needed a head start.  I, on the other hand, expected to complete the course in the middle of the pack range but had begged my way into the early start the day before so I could get back to help with the food tables at the finish.  Since I had never run an early start before, I was not prepared for the quiet and the small crowd.  I was so unprepared that it wasn’t until the second mile that it occurred to me that the water stops might not be up and I might be completely on my own.  I should have given my local running club more credit.  They were more than prepared.  Not only did they have the water stops ready but they had requisitioned volunteers to meet us along the trail and cheer us on.

As I approached the tenth mile, the crowds thinned out a little so they could be back with the real race but being a front runner for the first time in my life gave me all the boost I needed to run the last three.  I ran as though I were Paula Radcliffe.  I imagined the throngs who would meet me in the stadium, well not the stadium really but in the bus circle at the high school.  I ran as though I were the winner of the race. As I approached mile twelve and spectators did begin lining the last mile and continued to comment on the fact I was in first place, I smiled and waved and had my moment of glory.

There are five pictures of me crossing the finish line with a grin that beats the Cheshire Cat.  Several volunteers offered me bottles of water and Gatorade, people congratulated me on a good run and nobody accused me of taking a short cut to get there.  I may not have won the race and Michael Jackson didn’t greet me with a check but overall, I would say it was good to be a front runner for the day.

The Final Four

This is the hard part.  The last four weeks before the marathon. All of my longest runs are behind me.  I am lifting less and cutting back on the speedwork just a little so that I don’t tire out my legs in the final weeks of training and I am ready to move onto something new.  The problem is I still have four weeks – three more long runs and six more speed sessions.  There is more work to be done, but this is where I begin to get restless. I just want to run it already.

In the past I have done just that.  Found another marathon a few weeks earlier and gotten it done.  One of my best marathons happened that way.  Every March my local running club hosts a marathon on the trail I run on week in and week out.  I don’t do the race every year, but I always know its there.

Two years ago I thought I might use it for a training run.  The plan was to just run an easy 18 and then head home.  But, of course, that isn’t how it worked.  I felt great.  There was no stress to it, no expectations.  Finishing it was easy and apparently not at all surprising to my husband.

But now its fall and though there are four local marathons, the other three are all after the one I have planned.  So, I am forced to be patient.  To try hard not to sabotage all of the work I have put in.  In the words of my teenage son, I have to “just deal.”

Those who know me know that I encourage others to complete the marathon.  That I believe anybody can do it if they train for it and believe in themselves.  The kicker though, is the training.  The marathon itself is fun.  The first few weeks of training are fun.  But, the four weeks leading up to the marathon are not.

I remind myself every marathon season that training is fifty percent mental.  If I put my mind to it I can continue to train and improve.  I remind myself of that, but I forget to remind myself to be patient, to take the last four weeks to tweak the bits of my training I can and enjoy it for what it is.

“What it is” is the opportunity to settle in. To get comfortable and know I am ready.  It is the time to rest my legs from the twenty milers of early training.  It is a chance to train mentally.  To visualize race morning and the miles that will follow.

It is also the time to settle into my rituals.  The month before the marathon my family watches more sports movies than any other time of the year – Invincible, Remember the Titans and one of my all time favorites, Without Limits.  I also pull my favorite running books from the shelf – The Runner’s Anthology and The Long Road to Boston.

Apparently though, it is also my time to grumble about wanting to be done already.  Though this is the first time these words have made it to the page, I recognize them as the same ones that tumble through my mind before every marathon.

For me, it is the hardest part of marathon training, because suddenly, I have the time for self doubt.  I am not working as hard and that little marathon devil sits on my shoulder questioning this training program, no matter what “this” training program is.  Shouldn’t I be out there doing more, pushing harder?  Shouldn’t I just throw that program away and go with my gut?

This year though, I will shut the little devil in a shoe box and leave him in my closet.  Hide him away and try to enjoy the extra time and the extra spring in my legs.  I will trust the program and give myself a break.  Marathon day will be here soon enough.

And like my children who wait with baited breath for Christmas morning, I will wait and enjoy the anticipation.

Mind Over Matter

I went to bed looking forward to my workout this morning.  After a tough long run over the weekend I thought an intense spin session and weights would boost my confidence and help me start the week off right.  The nice thing about Monday’s late morning spinning class is that I don’t have to wake up early and even if I do, I can hang around the house for a while working on chores or writing before the children wake.

The morning started just as it should have.  I woke up with no headache or other side effects from the dehydration I had suffered on my long run.  My legs felt good and I was in just the right frame of mind.  I did wake up early, which isn’t a surprise as it has become my routine to start these hot, summer days earlier. So, I took my time.  I cleaned the kitchen, wrote a little and even posted a special birthday post for a surprise running partner I met along the trails on Sunday.  All in all, it was a productive morning.

Finally I threw on my heart rate monitor, kissed the children goodbye and headed out the door.  And that is where my plans went awry.  Sometime on Sunday my husband or children had gone into my car in search of who knows what and had turned on all of the interior lights so of course, my battery was dead.

To paraphrase Yogi Berra, fitness is ninety percent mental, the other sixty percent is all physical.  A dead battery was all it took this morning.  It was as though someone had put a tack on the driver’s seat and popped my balloon.  I had to wait for AAA to come out and jump the car (actually in end I needed a whole new battery) but other than that I was free to ride my bike in the basement or run in the neighborhood.  I have Pilates and Yoga discs galore.  I could have jumped rope in the road in front of the house while waiting for the tow-truck driver.  I had choices but I couldn’t see them at the time.  At the time, my workout was ruined.

In my mind it was done.  I had had my moment to get going and missed the window.  There is an old saying about mind over matter and I believe it.  It doesn’t matter what the reality is, if we believe that something is so then it just is.  This has been on my mind a lot recently as I have had several workouts completely ruined by my mind.  The one that sticks out most clearly was almost a month ago now.  I was going out for an easy three hour run on an out and back course.  For an hour and forty five minutes I felt unstoppable.  My body was responding to the miles like a well oiled machine when suddenly I looked around and realized I had not been this far down this particular trail in almost a year.  This is when I realized I had run out fifteen minutes longer than I had meant to.  Meaning my total run would be three and a half hours instead of three.

From that moment my mind took over my run.  Instead of getting tired at two hours and forty five minutes, which would have been expected at this part of my training, I immediately felt fatigued, my legs began to hurt and I slowed down.  My run was in tatters and it was all mental.

Looking back, analyzing today as well as that ruined long run, it is easy to see the mistake.  It is easy to get angry with myself now and wonder why I let it happen.  But will it be so easy to correct next time?  Can I change the mind tricks once they start?  I have to believe I can.  I have to believe that knowing the problem is half the battle.  The next time this happens I will have a battle plan.  Because that is what it is – a battle of mind over matter.

Resistance Trainer

I have a resistance trainer that I love with all of my heart.  The best bit is we grow together.  The trainer gets bigger and I get stronger.  And though I didn’t buy my trainer at a store, he is absolutely priceless.  He is now three years old and weighs close to thirty pounds but that is not how the story begins.  It begins six weeks after his birth.

I was given the go ahead to exercise after the requisite six weeks rest that comes after delivery.  The first thing I did after arriving home was to strap my little resistance trainer into our new jog stroller and head out for my first three mile run since I found out I was pregnant.  The first run, as they say, was the hardest.  Three miles took thirty six minutes and it took everything I had to make it through even at that pace.

Over the years, I have gotten faster and stronger as Zane has grown taller and heavier.  In the first year I wore headphones and even as I built my time on the road to almost two hours, he slept through almost every run.  I have since trained for three marathons using the jog stroller and my growing resistance trainer.  During that time, Zane stopped sleeping and started pointing out trees, dogs, and cars along the way, learning new words as I pushed my way past my earlier limits.

It has been my hope with all of my children that they would see me as more than just the person who feeds and bathes them – that they would also see me as an athlete.  My older children have had the benefit of seeing me train and finish marathons.  They have seen the work that goes into my quest to be an athlete and they have grown to think of me in those terms.

I knew that one day Zane would see this too, but I was surprised by how fast that happened.  During a recent run I was pushing my way up a hill as Zane sat in his stroller chattering away about the world going by.  Suddenly he stopped for just the shortest second and said to me, “Mommy, I am getting bigger and bigger.”  The funny thing was this came at a particularly hard part of my run.  I had been giving it my all to push his thirty pounds up a steep incline and though I thought I had no breath left to give I answered, “Yes, sweetie, you are.  And you are getting heavier and heavier.”

He did his quiet thing for a couple of more seconds and came back with a reply I will cherish for the rest of my life.  In his serious little voice he said, “But you are a very strong mommy, Mommy.”  You can bet your bottom dollar that I made it up that hill without walking, and the rest of the run went by faster than I thought possible.  Suddenly, my little resistance trainer had become my little motivator.  And as I said before, I love my resistance trainer with all my heart.

Running Away

“What are you running from?”

I hear this pithy remark on almost every run through my neighborhood, usually from nice older gentlemen who are trying to be clever.  Depending on my mood I either chuckle and respond with a wave or simply nod my head all the while thinking, “Obviously you have never been a mom or you would know what I am running from.”

Today, it was the editing class I, in a moment of weakness, signed up for in order to be a more effective writer.  I haven’t read the chapters or even thought about completing the assignment and my next class is tomorrow morning.  I am running from the added stress this class has brought into my already hectic life.

But there are so many things a mother runs from.  Sometimes it is the laundry that is piled chaotically on the floor of the laundry room or the dishes that couldn’t fit in the dishwasher after this morning’s playgroup.  Often it is the toddler pulling at my legs or screaming at the top of his lungs while playing some game I couldn’t possibly understand.  But most often it is the mom inside my head that wants to scream at the toddler who causes me to run.

Whatever it is that I am running from, I am able to lose it on the roads.  The stress of my class, the pressure to keep a clean house, or the need to be the perfect mom is shaken off by the pounding of my feet on the pavement.  They may come back to haunt me again but for that day they are left in the dust as I run up one court and down the next.

As a runner, this is the part I look forward to the most.  There are days I run because it is in the schedule.  I need to run long in order to be ready for the marathon, or I need to do speed work so that I might be able to pass my daughter in the next 5K but these days, the running away days, they are the best.  There is no expectation of greatness, no schedule to adhere to, just me and the road.  If I have left the house running from the mom who wants to lose her temper I may sprint the first mile, if I have left to avoid the work of motherhood I can mosey through the entire run and feel no guilt.  This is the run with no pressure and no rules.

Maybe those old men are clever after all because now I realize there is something I am running from but there is also something I am running to.  I am running to a peace I can only find on the roads.

My Lucky Day

It was there on the calendar.  Twenty Miles LSD (long slow distance).  Sometimes I swear it should read LSBD (long slow boring distance).  There are days when it seems as though the run will never end.  Fortunately today I realized before I even hit the first mile that I had won the lottery.  Two hundred and fifty million dollars.  Wow, the possibilities.  What could I do with that much money?  For that matter, what couldn’t I do?

For the next several miles I was as generous as Oprah.  I had built a whole street full of homes in New Orleans for the Katrina victims, bought brand new uniforms for soccer teams in Iraq, given to my church and my children’s schools.  It is amazing how fast the miles went by as this happened.  At least a mile and a half was eaten up in just building the houses and another mile flew by before I was able to decorate them and move the families in.

By mile seven I felt like I had tithed enough for the time being and was ready to help my family.  My mom finally got that house in the mountains she had always dreamed of.  Completely decorated and ready to move in.  My dad was thrilled with his brand new fishing boats.  Luckily the salesman knew all about fishing and convinced me that Dad would need one for fresh water fishing and one for deep sea fishing.  It took a couple of miles just to decide what my brother and sister would want.  In the end, I decided to pay off their mortgages and buy them something fun.  Speedy, red Porsches for each of them.

Mile twelve came before I even knew it.  Mile twelve is my favorite mile in my regular long run.  Not because I feel so good at that distance but because I turn into a beautiful and distracting neighborhood right on the bay.  Between every house you catch the loveliest breeze.  And as today was my lucky day I decided to buy my favorite house.  It did take some convincing to get the current owner’s to part with it but once they realized how much I had always loved their house and how happy I would be there, not to mention the nice amount of money I was willing to offer to live there, they finally parted with it.

As the house is almost a hundred and fifty years old the kitchen definitely needed to be remodeled.  Luckily, I had been thinking about my perfect kitchen for most of my adult life and was able to remodel the whole thing from the gorgeous state of the art appliances to the natural stone floors and granite counter tops in less than a mile.

I do find that my mind wanders in the later miles. So suddenly I began to miss my sister.  I knew exactly the thing for this though.  She should come for an extended visit and if that was to happen she would need a guest house.  This project took some time.  I not only had to design, build and decorate the guest house I also had to put in the pool beside which the guest house would sit because everybody knows a guest house always sits beside the pool.

Quite unexpectedly I found myself at mile fifteen with so much more to accomplish and so few miles left to accomplish it all in.  I had to quickly hire someone to help me decorate the rest of the house.  The crew from Extreme Home Makeover are pretty quick so after offering to foot the bill for their next couple of projects they agreed to come in and work their magic.  It takes a week on their show but they build a whole house in that time.  For me it took them only a couple of miles. The basement was my children’s dream basement as the whole thing had been turfed and fitted with goals. Games could start immediately.  My husband’s home gym had everything a person could ask for including the flat paneled high definition television with every sport channel possible.  And my bedroom was everything I had ever wanted and more. Voila, my dream house was complete and I still had a mile and a half to go.

As with any long run this is the hardest part.  I was almost done and beginning to really feel it in my legs.  Unfortunately a lottery winning, marathon training mom’s job is never done.  There was water leaking into my beautiful kitchen from the upstairs bathroom.  Luckily I found myself turning back into my driveway. I will just have to call the plumber and fix that next time, I’m sure the bathroom can use a remodel.

Previously Published at Irongirl.com

Cross Country Son

Blaise was three years old when I started training for marathons.  He would run around the living room and announce that he was running a marathon.  Over the next couple of years, as his father and grandmother dragged him from mile marker to mile marker only to stand on the side of the road looking for mommy and catching only a quick glimpse as I ran by in the middle of the pack, he discovered just how far a marathon was. As any kid would, he began to dread the marathon days.  Lucky for him Maryland has several marathons to offer the long distance runner and Grammy was always willing to let him spend the night at her house the night before the marathon and skip the mile markers and the endless boredom.  Even so, by the time he was ten he asked if we could have just one vacation without a race.   Destination races were the hardest because there was really no way out for him.  From California to Scotland to Austria he stood waiting for mommy to cross the finish line.  As he grew he showed no interest in running himself.  Boring and running had become synonymous in his mind.

Then the unimaginable happened – he didn’t make the high school soccer team.  Going to a school known for its athletics makes for a lot of competition.  As a family we had always talked about the positive effect of athletics in your teen years but most especially high school team sports.  So he joined the cross country team.  He went into it knowing he would hate it.  Knowing it would be the worse sport ever.  For Blaise, no ball equals no fun.

The first week he walked around on tired legs and complained about being hungry every minute of every day.  Everyday I heard the same complaints.  It was too hot, too hard and no fun, until suddenly I didn’t hear it anymore.  Suddenly I heard about other kids who needed a ride home.  My car was filled with stinky, sweaty high school cross country runners, half-heartedly complaining about that day’s run.  But I also heard them talking about my son being at the front of the pack, about my son running the longer distances and I realized he was enjoying himself.

The first race was at a farm donated for the event by a local parent.  Through the cornfields and over the cow patties, around the barn and through the small copse of trees, six teams would compete in an official 5K cross country race.  It was the first day in team uniform.  The soccer players, who stood out among the crowd because of the whites at the top of there legs, complained of feeling naked in the short shorts and scanty tops.  The same kids who stood beside a soccer pitch with total ease showed signs of nerves as they waited for their race to be called.

But I stood there waiting – waiting to see my son start his first long distance race.  The gun sounded and the runners headed in one direction while the newbie parents followed behind the varsity parents who knew the best place to see the runners along the route.  We headed to the first marker and cheered on our boys.  I stood there cheering on a child who had supported my sporting efforts for years.  Stood there staring in wonder at the speed he had developed.  Stood there until I realized this wasn’t the last marker.  I followed the veteran parents heading to the next vantage point and the next and then finally the finish line.  I watched him round the barn and head into the finish.  I cheered for him and noticed his speed increase as he heard my voice.  I watched as he crossed the finish line and the enormity of the moment occurred to him and then I watched him do something he had done for years as he headed back out onto the course and cheered on the middle of the packers and ran back again to cheer on those who were really struggling with the course.

As a spectator, watching me all those years, he had been bored.  He couldn’t feel the intensity of the race, but at that moment he saw it clearly.   He knew how his voice could help carry the others over the finish line.  I was proud of his time, proud that he had run such a hard race.  But I was just as proud of his going back and becoming a spectator again.

Previously published in The Streak – An Annapolis Striders‘ Publication

It’s Just a Fat Day

In the picture I am fifteen years younger, my hair is short and I am the very picture of health.  I still have the shorts I wore in that picture.  They are a size two and are completely out of style but I keep them for the same reason I keep the picture, to remind myself.  I remember clearly the day it was taken.  We were hiking in Pennsylvania.  The weather was perfect, my husband was perfect.  It should have been a perfect day but I remember it as though it were yesterday, not for its perfection but because of how fat I felt.

This picture was taken just before digital cameras so the film sat in a drawer with several other rolls waiting to be developed.  The day I finally picked up the pictures my first child was two months old and I was struggling to lose the weight I had gained during pregnancy.  When I came across this picture I cried.  I couldn’t believe how I had let that moment pass.  I looked at it remembering how perfect the day was and how fat I felt and wondered why I couldn’t have been happy then.  I wanted to will the girl in the picture to be happy.

Over the years I have kept the picture as a reminder of how off my thinking can be on a “fat day.”  Sometimes it works but not always.  Sometimes the fat days win.  The trick is in not letting them get me off track.  The fat days become a self-fulfilling destiny.  I stop eating to fuel my exercise and start eating to be fat.  I stop working out as hard.  And ultimately I begin to gain my weight back.  I am afraid I am at the beginning of that cycle right now so I have pulled out the picture and am willing the girl in the picture to be happy, to look at her clothes and step on a scale.  I am willing her to get a grip and realize she isn’t fat.

The good news is that I am not alone.  Many women do this.  We seek perfection.  We are a size eight and want to be a six, sure that we will never be happy until we are and then we are and suddenly we want to be a size four.  Eventually this search for perfection sabotages all of our efforts at leading a healthy life.

Kirstie Alley was on Oprah a couple of weeks ago talking about this exact thing.  Looking back at the bikini episode that she filmed because she had lost all of the weight, she said she hadn’t let herself enjoy that body.  She had wanted to be thinner.  Instead she has gained eighty three pounds and is looking back at that picture wondering why she couldn’t be happy then.

I don’t have the answers for everyone but I do have them for me.  It is a just a day.  It can turn into two days and then a week if I don’t remind myself.  The mirror lies on fat days.  Sometimes even the scale lies so for me the trick is in that picture.  If I can remember how fat I felt that day, how embarrassed I was to be in a pair of shorts pretending to be an athlete.  If I can remember that and look at those size two shorts that are far from fat, maybe I can trick today’s Ann into remembering it is only a fat day, remind her that perfection is not the goal.  Ultimately, the goal is health and happiness.

Originally published at www.irongirl.com