Breathing easy

(The pendant above was designed by Margaux Lange)
I'm taking a break from work. I've been digging my way through boxes of really boring documents for the last 9 hours or so and I've still got to write a summary of the enlightenment I've gained from said boxes before I can go home. And figure out what I'm going to wear tomorrow. And sleep so that I can function at the start of my THIRD BOOTCAMP! And brace myself for the big blood pressure follow up appointment at the doctor. And successfully placate the partner who will be annoyed that I'm not done with his project yet because I've been sucked into these boxes by another partner. And be mentally fresh and ready for a very important and potentially totally career changing meeting in the afternoon.

Deep breath in . . . . . Deep breath out . . . . .

Ok, wierdly enough, I do feel like I'm breathing pretty easy, all things considered. I ended up just chilling out all day yesterday and it was really nice. We even had a family outing to see the giant Christmas tree at Atlantic Station and wander the open air market and see the movie Enchanted (which I actually really really enjoyed although no one else seemed to). So, I kinda have myself to blame for not being more on top of things.

This morning I skipped church to run and had a wierd, somewhat spiritual, certainly transcendental kind of experience along the way. Continuing to have fun with mapmyrun.com I mapped out a 4 mile course, taking particular glee in the fact that it involved running the other way down Kirk Rd. which has kicked my ass this week with one particularly nasty hill climb. I felt so wicked and devious at the idea of running DOWN that hill! Ultimately I'm an idiot when it comes to topography. When I began descending that hill in the last mile of the run I was actually SHOCKED to discover that I had been descending before climbing it in the other direction during my other runs this week. So....you get it.....I still had to run uphill on Kirk. DOH!

I know I don't really want a flat course, I just don't want the hills to get all smug and self righteous on me. Because hills have feelings. And personalities. Hmmm... maybe this is the dawning of that whole "runner's high" thing?

ANYHOO . . . getting back on track . . . This was the longest run I've done since Bootcamp I and lo and behold, cardivascularly it was the easiest! There were large segments of the course where I wasn't even winded. I could smile and wave and say hello to everyone I passed without worrying that such activity would totally throw me off. Unfortunately, lower leg pain wise, it was agonizing. About halfway through the discomfort became more manageble but during the first two miles I took two short walk breaks (walking the distance from one telephone pole to the next) and paused in each of those breaks to stretch my shins and calves. When I resumed running after each break the pain didn't lessen so I was questioning whether it was worth it but, like I said after I got through that first 2 miles it lessened to the level it usually is and I was able to continue without focusing on it.

So, when I came into the office today I stopped at Phiddipedes to pick up those SuperFeet Insoles Instructor Tim keeps raving about but they were closed! ARG! So, I dunno how I'll do on my timed mile tomorrow. I iced a lot today since I was just sitting at my desk, and I did extra lower leg stretches at the end of the run.

Still, I trust that I'll figure this out somehow. In the meantime, I feel like my lungs and I are falling in love for the first time. I love to hear myself breath when I run, it is so soothing and hypnotic and meditative. And if I try real hard I can recapture a little taste of that sense of peace by just breathing slowly and deeply right here and now. I'm facing a lot of hills tomorrow . . . but I'm confident I can breath right through them.

Refusing to be daunted . . .

I feel like I'm staring down the barrel of the holidays without my armored vest on. And I know that it is within my power to reframe this, to accept that our first Christmas in our new house will certainly be far from perfect and to be ok with that. I did pretty good with Thanksgiving, not over planning but just letting things flow and not being upset that we didn't have a table to sit at or that we were lacking decorations or candles or that we ended up not eating until almost 5. But Christmas involves a lot more people, out of town guests, all with simultaneous increased stress at work. The same thing happened to me last year, a lot of attorneys plan better apparently and have quiet Decembers. I on the other hand will be in my final rush to bill as many hours as I can. So I guess I should feel blessed that several of my active cases which have just been rocking along all calm and such are now ramping up and my calander of deadlines in December is looking downright frightening. And training for the half needs to start in earnest first week of December so running and bootcamp are NOT things I can let go of right now. So I've just got to dig deep, let go of things that other people ARE capable of doing (despite my constant foreboding that no one else will do it quite the way I want it to be done) and appreciate the love the people in my life will try to share with me despite my best efforts to miss it altogether in a whirlwind of stress.

On the plus side . . . yesterday was a pretty decent day. Got some chilling time on the couch. Successfully ran the 3.56 mile course I had mapped out. Enjoyed some good family time. And got to visit one of my bestest friends and hang with her almost 3 week old daughter for the first time. She is one of those rare BEAUTIFUL newborns that you can just stare at all day. And she was a total doll, sleeping in my arms for most of the visit, treating me to the occasional adorable grimace or smile or squeaks or grunts. Opening her eyes periodically and then settling back in to sleep. Her parents insist that she is their own singing frog, screaming non stop when no one is around and switching into angel mode whenever company is over so that no one understands their shell shocked sleep deprived rantings. Holding a new baby like that is just one of those simple life affirming things that everyone should work into their schedule periodically. It is good for the soul.

The run was easier than the 2.3 miles on Thanksgiving in many ways. I really didn't intend to run the whole way but I just tricked myself as usual with the whole "you can walk at the top of this hill" promise over and over. I really NEVER appreciated how hilly my neighborhood is until now. Its good though, by the St. Pete Classic 10K I should be ready to really rock it on a totally flat course and I'll be able to mentally accept the hills in the Half in March. On the website they have a chart that shows the elevations for the run, starting at mile 6 and ending at mile 7 it appears to be one long steep hill. After cresting that though it appears to be mostly flat or downhill for the remainder of the race. So that will be my big mental hurdle, if I can make it to mile 7 I'll be past the worst of the hills AND over halfway.

I almost thought my prayer for elves had been answered, for the first 1.5 miles I regularly passed neighbors who cheered me on. Then they all disappeared but it got me over the hurdle of the biggest hill on that course. It also made me realize that if I'm running in my own neighborhood during daylight hours I need to look a LITTLE bit cute. I really need some new running clothes, seriously.

For any runners reading this, I'm interested in hearing about the Galloway method. My friend who just had the baby used it to train for her first half and she insists she was faster doing his run/walk method than she was just running. And that she could go further with no pain (she also struggled with shin issues). And I've read similar testimonials online. Thus far for me I've been so focused on NOT walking at any cost that I'm having a hard time getting my head around it. I'd appreciate more feedback if anyone is so inclined. There is a Galloway training group starting near my office on January 5 specifically for the Georgia Half.

Elves needed, inquire within

I started Thanksgiving by getting off my butt after 4 days of inactivity. I won't be able to run a half in March on mental energy alone. So I used MapMyRun.com to map out some courses around my house and I hit the road. And almost hit a wall. Apparently I am about 50 lbs heavier running alone than I am running surrounded by bootcampers and road racers. It was really really hard to run 2.3 miles with nothing but my twisted mind for company. I've already acknowledged that running is, in many ways, more of a mental challenge than a physical challenge but that run totally hit me with it.

So, I need a team of friendly running elves. Preferably to map out my courses and to keep me in the dark about how far I'm going. They could put little signs along the way. And then they could be on hand to have a cheering section every half mile or so. That should do it. Any volunteers?

Well I didn't get up early and run this morning but it's nice and cold so I'm going to try again, a bit further this time, 3.5 miles. Undecided about whether to take music with me or whether to just confront the mental demons head on and conquer them naked. But if Santa is reading this, a new ipod shuffle might be a good idea! ;-) I'm too scared to risk dropping Clint's ipod video to risk running with that.

Hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving! Thanks to Rachael Ray I'm pretty darned pleased with how my turkey and stuffing and gravy turned out. I've heard how difficult gravy is to make all my life and mine rocked on the first try! And I had fun doing it! Although I wish Rachael would acknowledge that her published prep times clearly incorporate a sous chef or two. If I get lots of applicants for the elf positions maybe I'll make one a sous elf. The actual cooking was pretty fun, the chopping not so much. I also learned that its a bad idea to cut apples with the wrong type of knife while talking on the phone. It is taking me 8 hours to type this post because I'm missing my left index finger. Well..... technically I'm just missing the USE of it since it is wrapped in a ginourmous bandage.

Crickets

I dreamed about running last night. I can’t remember details, just running, each time I woke in between hitting the snooze button this morning I was running and thinking of distances. That’s one nice side effect of sleep deprivation you know, remembering your dreams. I’ve been getting too much sleep lately and not remembering them because I’m not waking in the middle. Last night I stayed up very very late doing some long overdue blog surfing. I also finally got around to adding a blogroll to my sidebar. It is a work in progress, I’m looking to add more running oriented blogs, especially from Atlantans so I can steal their training ideas. Not all of them are health and fitness oriented, some are actually people I know in real life.

Then when I was finally getting ready to go to bed I remembered the crickets. They came two days early because of the holiday and I wasn’t ready for them. But I couldn’t bear the thought of going to bed and leaving them for another night and day in their cold and soulless shipping tube. So I retrieved the cricket keeper, temporarily housed the remaining crickets from the last batch in a plastic bucket, and cleaned cricket poop and sheds and left over food so it was all sparkling and shiny and welcoming. Then I transferred the older crickets back in, gave them fresh food, and then dumped 50 new crickets on their heads. I don’t think they were impressed. But they all looked settled in this morning. Good cricket husbandry is one of those things that I spend way too much time fretting about but had I gone on to bed last night I would have woken this morning feeling all guilty like only a bad cricket mommy can. Which is ultimately ridiculous because I simultaneously have NO compunction about dumping 20 crickets into the terrarium of death and cheering as Bindi the Beard Dragon systematically, prehistorically and awesomely hunts them down. Sometimes Chase and I even make voices for the crickets and carry on silly conversations wherein they are super excited about the spacious new digs, then confused when their friends start disappearing one by one, then . . . CRUNCH. I guess I just figure I owe them clean and well fed final days. And, in the scheme of things, it’s pretty easy to make crickets happy. Its satisfying to serve the crickets in my life. It makes me happy.

I’ve devoted so much time to controlling and complicating things in order to “create” happiness. And I think there IS something admirable in that, but there is also something somewhat pathetic in it. Because my manufactured happy moments are never as satisfying as the ones that catch me unawares. I used to spend a lot of time researching work out techniques and buying workout equipment and clothing. I would read motivational books and get really really really psyched to MAKE THE CONNECTION. And I’d be really focused on how I looked working out, and how it felt to tell people I was working out, and not so much on what was going on within me. And the gear would lose its novelty. And all I would really perceive was pain and effort and the lack of instant results. And the gear would start gathering dust. And I would feel a bit stronger in my conviction that I just couldn’t do it.

What was different this time? I don’t know. I just didn’t think too much, which is a real fundamental accomplishment for me. I just showed up that first morning after only 2 hours of sleep with my stomach in knots. Then, after fighting the urge to hurl and after a thoroughly horrible day on every other front in my life, I just got up and went again the next morning, without really thinking about it too much. I did start blogging that second day, but the blogging has been less about controlling the process and more about merely documenting it. Certainly this blog is full of those unexpected moments of happiness that I’m only now fully realizing would never have happened had I tried to force them. Maybe I’ve just finally reached a point where I’ve stopped expecting happiness as my due. And now I’m finally free to fully appreciate those moments when I stumble across them.

0 to 13.1 . . .

It's official. I'm now registered for the ING Georgia Half Marathon on March 30. I'm very very excited about it RIGHT NOW. Lets hope that excitement doesn't completely fizzle out in the next 130 days. I was thinking about signing up for the Indy 500 Mini Marathon so I could run it with one of my blog heroes, PastaQueen and because the boys in my life would think it was REALLY REALLY cool that part of the course involves running around the Racetrack. But I have friends and family and so much support here, and it will feel like such a huge accomplishment to run a race through my hometown, where I already know the streets involved so well. I have a lifetime of memories along the route, it will be very healing to create a memory of me successfully running a race down the streets that I often find myself driving stressed out and anxious.

I'll be running as part of the Operation Bootcamp team. Jojo and Tim have assured me they will keep me on track and help me with my training schedule. So, I'll keep you posted. I might try and create a new element on the page to track my training. Hmmmm, if Santa is reading this a GPS watch thingamagig would be really cool.

I broke the 160 point this morning on the scale. I've also given myself permission to indulge in some comfort food this week so I'm not going to freak out if I regain that half pound sometime this week.

I read a really interesting post at the Angry Fat Girlz Blog today about the tension between the Fat Acceptance movement and the Weight Loss community. Bootcamp has been such an eye opener for me in terms of body acceptance and confronting the assumptions I often lazily rely upon. There are bootcampers who are bigger than I am, and stronger too. There are many bootcampers who are skinnier than I am, and not as fit as me or as other "fatter" people. I know someone who has struggled with weight but has also, simultaneously, maintained a rigourous workout schedule and who was often more cardio fit and stronger than I was, even if I was smaller and lighter.

Fitness is important. To accept yourself as unfit, to resign yourself to being incapable of movement, is incredibly self destructive. But so is working out like a demon and then hating yourself because you don't hit arbitrary number goals. I haven't lost MUCH weight, or really, in the scheme of things, too many inches. But I feel so empowered and strong that it doesn't really matter too much. Ok, it matters more when I'm depressed and looking for something to flog myself with, but today its not mattering so much so I can speak with some sort of moral authority.

So, Fat Acceptance is an important and empowering movement. And the suggestion that Fat Acceptance and weight loss can be incompatible makes sense when weight loss is a self-destructive self-denying tool. My six year old son lamented the other day that he thought he was fat. I take responsibility for that, I've certainly never suggested to him that I think HE is, but over the course of his short life he's seen far too much of me abusing myself over my weight. I'm so thankful that I'm finding this new path NOW, before he's a teenager, while its still relatively easy to influence him. Weight loss can be a side effect of fitness. Of eating properly to fuel your body. Of nurturing your fit self. But, to a certain extent, you can be fat AND fit. If we all just focused on fitness, there'd be no way not to connect with each other. Because fitness is an ACT, not an acheivement. So every step is progress and we should NEVER feel bad about progress, no matter the pace.

Racing makes this so clear for me. Each step closer to the next mile marker is cause for rejoicing. I never know if the scale or the measuring tape will directly reflect my efforts to lose weight or inches. But no matter what happens tomorrow, NOTHING can subtract the steps I took today.

So, in writing this I've realized how skewed my side bar is and I've rearranged to reflect the important stuff at the top. Even posting my weight FIRST in the sidebar is a way that I unconsciously minimize my self-worth. My weight is just ONE of many measures that, taken together, present a complete picture of my health. I DO like me some charts and graphs. Easily measured numbers are easy to track. "Feelings of Accomplishment" in and of themselves do not chart easily. Do not discount those feelings though. I don't think knowing that I weigh half a lb less than I did last week is going to propel me through any finish lines. But knowing what it feels like to meet a fitness goal will.

Photographic Evidence!

Taken after the Kids Chance Race (Chase grabbed one of his soccer trophies so we'd match!)


My Race Wall (taken after the Paideia Slither)

Breaking Records

Just my own, but still, I'm worried I'm getting a bit complacent about the fact that I break my own records every time I run under timed conditions. As you can see in the side bar I took another 2:09 off my 5K time at the Paideia Slither this past Saturday. The amount of time I drop each run is less each time and I intellectually understand that eventually I will plateau and I might even go long on some runs due to conditions or the course or me not being ready. At that point I will have to overcome the urge to stop trying. But, that point hasn't come yet and it is a ton of fun to shave the minutes off in the meantime!

The Paideia Slither was much hillier than I anticipated (and it was hillier than the Kids Chance which makes it extra suprising that I ran it so much faster!). It was also VERY cold at the start, and although I tried to stretch some I was afraid to stretch too much given how cold my muscles were. But I do like running in the cold, and I had stripped off my jacket and my gloves by the time we passed the first mile marker. Yes, I said "we" because one of my bestest childhood friends ever, Katy, ran with me! I encouraged her to not slow herself down to stay with me but as it turns out (although she's an accomplished runner with a few half marathons under her belt) she hasn't run in quite a while so I apparently wasn't too painfully slow for her. I was a little nervous about the prospect of someone running "with" me. I knew that even if I was capable of chatting through the race I probably wouldn't feel like it. Running is an intensely mental game for me. But Katy was GREAT. She matched herself to my pace and didn't make me feel anxious about running where I was comfortable. She has some sort of wierd malady which makes her feel the need to talk a LOT while she runs. But she stressed to me that I absolutely did NOT need to respond, she wouldn't be offended. So, sure enough, other than the occasional affirmation from me Katy kept up a pretty steady monologue throughout the race which I found quite pleasant and distracting from the fear I always have that I'm just steps away from walking. And she was instrumental in pushing me to find some sprint power at the end to make it to the finish at 34:00 minutes when I really felt like it was impossible.

So we averaged 10.83 minutes per mile, which is so much faster than the 12:14 minutes it took me to run just one mile on October 5 when I was running flat out for my first end of bootcamp PT test. The speed with which I'm improving is astonishing to me. It's like my body is all of a sudden "getting" it, on some sort of cellular level. I wonder if averaging 8:31 per mile will ever be possible on a 5K?

Sorry no photos yet. I PROMISE to get on it this evening, we were just too busy catching up from Clint's trip yesterday evening. There is a picture of me and Chase with my trophy and a picture I took of my "wall of numbers" in my closet. I also took a picture of the blisters I developed during the Kids Chance run because I was really proud of them but I've since decided not to gross you all out. No blisters at that Paideia race so my "new" shoes are officially broken in. As I suspected, my shins hurt at the start of the race but stopped hurting once I was warm, and then were sore and tender after the race. But they didn't hurt during the race like they do during bootcamp so I think it has to do with intensity or perhaps my form when I'm jogging as opposed to sprinting.

So my current plan is to rest this entire week although I'm already feeling kind of grossed out by that plan (wierd huh?) so I may do some stretching and strength exercises at least. And maybe I'll go for a short jog, I want to map out some routes around my house. I'd love to run a race a week but that could get ridiculously expensive! I want to give my legs at least 4 days off though so that my shins and my right hamstring (which has been tight since last week's sprint day at bootcamp) can fully recover. And then Bootcamp III starts next Monday!