Category: Running

I Am Not Okay

Photo by Dương Nhân from Pexels

My son almost died when he was a baby. And I thought I was okay once we checked out of the hospital. It wasn’t until three months later, when some of the trauma from that experience lifted, that I realized I hadn’t been okay at all.

Denial. Not Just a River in Egypt

I went through that same pattern for about a year. The cloud of trauma would rise up a bit, and I would look back at the previous months and think ‘Why did I think I was okay then? Boy I’m glad I’m okay now,’ until I noticed the number of times I said that. At that point I started worrying that I wasn’t ever going to be okay again.

Panic drove me to therapy. I had small children to care for, a demanding job, and the fallout from the last recession to deal with. I didn’t have time for PTSD or whatever it was that was wrong with me. The plan was to go, talk to someone to take the edge off of things, and then carry on with my life.

That isn’t how therapy works. I know that, now. But at least I went. Up until that point my only real coping mechanisms were denial and knitting, and knitting can only get you so far.

You Can’t Heal if You Don’t Admit You’re Injured

The thing is, you can’t heal if you refuse to admit you’re injured. It’s hard to admit when I’m hurting. I am the super hero of my own life. But sometimes life punches you right in the jaw and you need to admit it hurts.

My company is going through a reorganization. A lot of good people are leaving, and it hurts.

Discomfort Isn’t An Emergency

Let’s talk about running. I promise it’s relevant. Running long distances hurts. Something inevitably chafes, my muscles scream, and sweat gets into my eyes.

Long distances also scrub away the things that don’t really matter–if I can go the distance, I gain a kind of clarity I can’t find any other way. But to get there, I spend the last few miles talking myself through the tired and the pain. I’m not talking about actual injury here. I’m talking about surface discomfort–blisters, fatigue, that sort of thing.

You know what? Discomfort isn’t an emergency. Strictly speaking, if I’m running at the edge of my capability, I’m not okay. But the shortest distance back to okay is to wade right through. Running is the least traumatic way I know of to learn to cope with pain.

Almost

There’s only one word in the sentence ‘my son almost died as a baby,’ that I am grateful for. That word is ‘almost.’ The experience gave me a set of coping skills I wish I could have learned by running instead. And that’s basically where I’m at right now with this reorganization. Coping. My colleagues will find great jobs. At some point this will stop hurting so much. I will put one foot after the other and I will keep going until I push on through.

Knitting Bender

When the Tough Can’t Run, They Knit


Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Saturday I was supposed to run a half marathon. I hurt my foot a week before the race, two days after my ten mile run of fun. I wish I could tell you what I did, but we’re still figuring that out. All I know is that I didn’t tear a ligament, and I haven’t broken anything.

Am I upset? Yes. Not as much as I was Saturday, but yes. I didn’t run very much last year because my daughter gave me a concussion in the spring of 2017. She didn’t mean to. She is always very sorry when she hurts me, but that doesn’t change the fact that the child has been banging her head into mine from babyhood on. At six months old she knocked my front teeth loose.

After that first memorable whack, she’s specialized in hits to the chin, which throws my neck out. This is why I keep my chiropractor on speed dial. The poor man was half way convinced I was part of a fight club. That’s code for ‘I worry someone is hurting you.’ I am beyond grateful to him for having the courage to ask. It turns out that my nine year old is the one hitting me. While it’s sometimes debilitating, it isn’t abuse–but he didn’t know that. I might have needed help getting out of a situation, and he was willing to help.

Future photo of my ninja daughter.
Photo by Sarah Cervantes on Unsplash

In any event, it was a bad concussion. I was banned from all screens, all reading, and any exercise over a slow shamble, for two weeks. I couldn’t run for a month. And once I could run, I had to start very conservatively lest I suffered a relapse.

2018 was the year I returned to health. It’s been slow–it turns out that sitting on a couch not doing anything is a signal that my body should start breaking spontaneously–but I’ve gradually regained most of my endurance. I even started strength training semi-regularly. I can’t sign up for a half marathon every three months the way I used to, but Saturday’s half was going to be the signal that I was almost there. A symbol of good things to come.

I’m trying not to think about how long this injury might take to heal. I have two main coping mechanisms–knitting and running. On the down side, this means I’ve (temporarily) lost 50% of my coping skills. On the up side, I have finished a sweater, a pair of boot socks, and I have another pair of socks on the way. Some people go on drinking benders. I go on fiber benders. And the knitting will continue until morale (and my foot) improves.

Remote Work Gave Me Running

nathalie-desiree-mottet-624600-unsplash
Photo by Nathalie Désirée Mottet on Unsplash

I run to burn the crazy. I run to quiet my spinning brain so I can recharge in the silence. Running helps me beat the seasonal sads. Somehow, running in the forest in the pouring rain makes the rain less depressing. I have no idea why this is, but it works for me.  If I didn’t work remotely, I would never have figured this out.

I run during my lunch break. I hear about people who can exercise at lunch and then jump back into their cubicle. How does that work in real life? I sweat like a crazy person when I’m working out. I sweat so hard that salt crystallizes on my face and I have to be careful about how energetically I wipe the sweat off my brow for fear of scratching myself. And let’s not even talk about the smell. I don’t understand how you can exercise, shower, and get back into your work clothes all in the space of 30-60 minutes. Either these folks don’t sweat, don’t work out very hard, don’t work out very long, or they are magic. If any of you are magic, please tell me how to gain this superpower.

I used to be an indoor exerciser. I was that high school kid who woke up at 5am to workout before school, and that morphed into a gym habit in my 20’s. The gym stopped working for me when I went remote. If I’m not careful, I can spend all day indoors and then I feel trapped. And let’s not mention the existential angst of running on a treadmill and not getting anywhere.

That trapped feeling first drove me to biking outdoors. Biking is fun but ultimately limiting when you don’t like riding a bike in the street. Running though…I wanted to at least have the ability to run. When I first started a couch to 5k plan I told myself that I only had to do it for a week. If I still hated it at the end of the week, I could stop.

Running outside was intimidating for reasons I can’t articulate even now. But running inside wasn’t an option because I needed to be outside for my mental health. And it turns out that when the scenery changes, I love running. It’s hard in all of the best ways. I’ve logged anger miles, sorrowful miles, and miles filled with gratitude. At the end of all of them I feel like my insides have been washed clean. I’m ready to handle whatever comes next.

It makes me wonder what remote work will give me next. Do you work remotely? What does it give you?

Tax Marathon

Think taxes and half marathons have nothing in common? Think again. And pass the cake.

I did the family’s taxes this afternoon, and it struck me that taxes have a lot in common with running a half marathon:

  • Both take hours to complete.
  • It goes better if you have lots of carbs to help you through it.
  • At some point in the process I question my commitment, my sanity, and the parentage of the gear I am using.
  • Something is going to  chafe.
  • My play list better be good.
  • I get faster every time, but it’s still painful.
  • I deserve a medal at the end.
  • And despite everything, I’ll sign up to do it again next year.

It isn’t as fun, though. Maybe next year I’ll wear a technical t-shirt and a racing bib and see if that helps.

 

Workout Pants Are Better Than People

Sometimes you just need to ditch the people.

If you think about it, you know it’s true. People are great. I love people. However, there are times when you are just going to have a better life experience if you ditch the people and spend some quality time with your workout pants.

Flexibility. People can leave you if you change too much. Your workout pants are in it for the long haul. There is expandable spandex for when your weight waxes, and a drawstring for when it wanes. Your workout pants will stick with you until they literally burst their seams

No judgement. I sweat. The temperature can be literally freezing outside, and if I’m running, I’m sweating way more than is socially appropriate. Do my workout pants judge me? No they do not. They are part of the solution–wicking away that extra moisture and spreading it out into the universe. That’s deep, that is.

Secret pockets. How many people do you know who are willing to hold whatever crap you choose to bring with you? Most of our moms quit doing this somewhere in elementary school. My workout pants pockets just don’t quit. Plus storing stuff in secret compartments makes me feel like a ninja. It’s a storage solution and a morale booster all in one zippered package.

Are people are getting you down? Throw on a pair of workout pants. They will never tell you to change your attitude, and will help you work it out in whatever way suits you best.