Just One Marathon

Didn't You Used To Blog?

I'm on a self-imposed blogging ban until I finish my second assignment in the course from hell. I hope to wrap up by Tuesday, after which I'll be back with my usual complaints, excuses and rationalizations.

In the meantime, thank goodness for other bloggers and their unflagging, guilt-inspiring commitment to running and writing. It keeps the pressure on and makes me excited to rediscover the joyful runner I was one year ago, when this picture was taken. Keep up the good work!

Now its back to the books for me.

Bright Lights, Long Run

Here is how it happens.

You see other runners on the road and think bitter, angry thoughts. They’re all, like: “Look at me – it’s 5 p.m., raining and cold and I’m out on my run. Enjoy your commute home, slacker!” You hate them.  Your own short runs start to get harder and your pace slows. You persevere, but you feel like you’re logging meaningless junk miles.

 

Then a day comes when everything goes right. You have time to run, you feel healthy and strong, and all you need to do is put on your shoes and step out the door. But you procrastinate, finding one thing or another to do (fold the laundry, answer the phone check your e-mail) while your window of running time gets smaller and smaller. That’s when you realize you’ve lost it: the will to run.

 

Now you’re at the crossroads. You spent years and years as a non-runner. You remember how much free time you had back then, how good it felt to laze around all Sunday morning or spend your lunch hour eating with friends, or be tucked warm in bed on a cold weekday morning. Those were good times.

 

But you also remember how you used to run out of energy part-way through the day. How stairs made you huff and puff. And how envious you were of ordinary people who set and achieved what seemed to be incredible athletic goals (Run a marathon! Complete a triathalon! Ski the Rockies!). You also know how hard you’ve worked to make yourself as a runner, and how easy it would be to make yourself a non-runner once again.

So, you lace up your shoes and venture out, telling yourself you’ll just run for 30 minutes, and see how it goes. You can even walk, if you want. The first 5K are awful … you really pay for weeks of low mileage. Then you notice that you’re half-way to a 10K run. The sky is blue, the air crisp and cool and the world full of shiny, happy people playing with their children raking leaves, walking hand-in-hand. For a few minutes, you actually forget you’re running. At 7K, you start to set goals for yourself – your next distance, a new time goal, an upcoming race. At 10K, you mentally compose a blog post about your experience and decide to get all Jay McInerneyand write it in the second person. You hope this won’t be too annoying.

 

Before you know it, you’ve run 12K (when’s the last time you actually ran longer than you intended?) and you know that the runner inside you has emerged again. And you vow not to let her go back into hiding.

Career-Limiting Odours

Most Tuesdays, I sneak out of my office for a quick lunchtime run. I love this routine because it’s a great energizer and an efficient way to wedge an extra workout into my week. I feel a bit guilty doing it because there’s never enough time to do everything at work as it is. But I rationalize it telling myself that I make up the time in so many other ways (for example, by eating lunch at my desk most other days).

There’s just one little problem. Although my workplace does have a locker room and showers (I work in a hospital), there is neither the time nor the facilities to wash and dry my hair. So, I shower, apply lots of product to all parts of my body and hope for an afternoon with no meetings in close quarters.

If I do have an afternoon meeting, my mind is only 99 per cent on the task at hand. The other 1 per cent of my brain is mulling over the all-important question: “Does my hair smell?”

A few weeks ago, I pounded out 30 minutes on the treadmill, quickly showered, jumped back into business attire and rushed to a meeting with my boss and all the managers in the department. As I sat down, I came to the horrifying realization that although in my mind I was finished working out, my body had not cooled down yet. As I prepared to present to the group on a current project, I could feel a wave of sweat sweeping from my head to my feet.

That time, my brain was asking another question: “Take the jacket off and cool down or keep it on and provide a protective barrier between my undoubtedly-stinky shirt and the people who determine my future career?” Yes, it was my “Pursuit of Happyness” moment, and I probably should have come up with some kind of clever line about my condition – maybe made a pun about the sweet smell of success or something. Until I do get that 1% inspiration (as opposed to the 99% perspiration that I already possessed), I’ll just have to go through my work life wondering if people think of me as “that smelly girl from HR”.

Could be worse, I suppose.

Choices

Our mechanic has a sign up in his shop. It reads:

Good.

Fast.

Cheap

Pick Two.

This sign used to amuse me as I considered which two I would pick. Good and cheap but not fast? Fast and good but expensive? Something that sucks but is fast and cheap?

Anyways, I think about that sign sometimes and how it would apply to my own life. It would probably read something like this:

Mother.

Employee.

Manager.

Wife.

Homemaker.

Student.

Runner.

Friend.

Daughter.

Community member.

Pick one and stick with it for the next ten minutes.

It’s like the mental exercise I play with the mechanic's sign, only more stressful. Yesterday, I nicked a little extra time at lunch and spent it on the treadmill: good runner, bad employee. Last week, I went to work extra early and didn’t get to say good morning to my kids: good employee, bad mom.

I am not complaining … much. I’m incredibly lucky to be able to step into any one of those roles, even for 10 minutes. It’s just challenging when they come into conflict and I realize I am just not going to be able to do it all that day. But it didn’t seem to worry my mechanic much. Maybe I should follow his lead.

I will leave you with this cute YouTube video of a mom juggling for her baby ... because who doesn't like to see a baby laugh so hard he falls over?

Early Reviews on the Morning Run

I am now committed to running in the a.m. once a week. I started on Tuesday and here are my initial thoughts.

The "pros":

• A warming sense of solidarity and respect for all those people up and out to work before 6 a.m., especially the lady in the coffee shop uniform standing at the bus stop. She will be there later when I pick up my morning tea at Tim’s. (What’s Tim’s, you ask? A Canadian institution, my American friends … click and learn.)
• A day-long feeling of superiority for having gotten up early and exercised. Bonus: the rather unsportsmanlike pleasure I take in seeing other runners out pounding the pavement at 5 p.m., when I’m on my way home to dinner and a glass of wine.
• A run that starts in the dark and ends in the morning light. Insert inspiring life lesson here.

The “cons”:

• Loss of sleep from tossing and turning all night in disproportionate dread of the morning run. I don’t call myself the Reluctant Runner for nothing.
• The unbearably loud noise my iPod seems to make that early in the morning. I’ll have to come up with a more soothing morning mix. Talk radio? Elevator music?
• The idea that I will have to do it again.

Bottom line: I still hate the morning run with the burning intensity of a thousand white-hot suns. Kind of.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

I teach courses on change management and yet change has a way of sneaking up on me without my noticing. For example, I changed jobs this summer and I still have not quite adapted my routines to my new job responsibilities. I used to work four days a week and now I work five. Also, my new job is much busier and more demanding, which makes it a lot more fun but creates a ripple effect that touches everything I do outside of work.

For one thing, I used to go for a run on my lunch hour. I can still do that from time to time, but nothing like in my old position. There, I had a lot more control over my time: I could arrange meetings to make sure I had time to run and get all my work done. Now, not so much.

This wasn’t a sudden change … I saw it coming for miles, like the poor dead squirrel I slowly approached and then passed during a recent run. (Where do you look when running past road kill?) Still, I’m scrambling, trying to make my old routine fit my new lifestyle. I try get in a couple of lunchtime runs each week, and succeed only about half the time. So, duh, I need to change my schedule. But how?

I can’t run after work because of my part-time job as chauffeur to my children, taking them from one after-school activity to another. Evenings after dinner are just too dark and cold. That leaves … gasp … the morning run. If you’ve read any of my previous posts, you know what an incredible psychic toll the morning run takes on me. But I really don’t see any way around it: I love my new job, I love running.

It's not hard to convince myself of the necessity of a morning run while I’m considering it the middle of the afternoon. It’s feeling the need to run when I crack my eyelids at 5:30 a.m. that is a little more challenging. I’m going to try this: pick one day next week and give it a try … I’m thinking Wednesday.

Who knows? It might be excellent. Morning runs are addictive – so says running blogger Vanilla. We’ll see.