“Running is my anchor. It’s not what I do, but it’s what makes everything else I do okay.”- Ben Cheever.

Michelle, one of my buddies at DailyMile.com, posted this today.  It totally sums up my feelings about life right now.

Last week I entered the ranks of working people.  I started doing a temporary 20hr/week job that’s 30 minutes from my house, so with the hour commute everyday, it’s really 25 hours out of my week.  The kids are in school 30 hours a week, assuming school is in session 5 days a week and that my kids aren’t sick, so that leaves me with just enough time to grab a bite to eat and fill up the car with gas before I have to pick them up from school.  I’m excited about earning some money and contributing to the family’s finances, but to be totally honest, juggling the timing of everything is really hard right now. 

I’ve always run early in the morning, so I can’t figure out why things feel different all of a sudden.  I feel rushed all afternoon and evening, and super-tired in the morning.  I’m not used to sitting in a chair at the computer so long during the day, and when I get up my body is stiff and sore.  Between working and doing stretches to make my body happy, I’m having a hard time figuring out when I can feel relaxed and pleasant with my family.  Every chore that I have to do feels like another part of the “working” that I need to do during the day, rather than something I choose to do for me.

I know this is a transition period, but that doesn’t mean that I understand how to get through this any better.  It’s still new TO ME, which means that I need to learn this skill.

It’s the 3^rd day in a row I’m working from home.  Both kids are home sick, though they’re not in dire straits and they’re old enough to know that I need some quiet to get the work done.  Still, I have a ton of GUILT about them being home and having my face stuck in front of a computer screen.  I feel like I’m ignoring them.  Then my brain plays “devil’s advocate” and says “you’ve raised them to be independent and NOT need you to entertain them every minute of the day, why is today any different?”  How should I know?  I don’t understand it, I just feel it.

I didn’t run today, and I’m really bummed because 7 miles is a good amount of running in exchange for some perspective.  I’d gladly pay for the hour at this point, just to feel the cool wind on my face and be outside MOVING.  I’m trying really hard not be a big whiner and be adult about the change in my daily routine, but it’s hard.  Wait, isn’t it supposed to be hard?  Oh right… if it were easy, then everyone would want to do it.  I’ve heard that before about running.  The thing is though; running is easy for me.  It’s the calm in my life, the zen in my step, the thing that keeps me grounded.  It reminds me that my body is here, my mind is (thus far) firmly attached, and if I can run 10 miles on any given day, then I can do this too.

Instead of running today I WROTE about it, and magically I actually feel better!

Oh, and a quick update on the birds:  they’re in full-on nesting mode.  Right now there’s a battle going on over the birdhouse outside my window where they’re chasing each other off.  I’m secretly rooting for the guy hanging out on the chain of the birdhouse.  I think I’ll call him Claude.

This is not the post I started to write yesterday about my morning run.  THAT one is about half-way done, but I’m scrapping it in favor of writing about what I did AFTER the run.  I want to write this because I want a record what I did on March 6, 2010, long after this exact date fades into the fog of memory.

Saturday morning started with a run, but the 5-mile morning run was a warm-up exercise for the rest of the day.  I went out at 6:15 in order to get a few miles in before I had to get myself dressed and organized to head to south Denver for a presentation at the Inverness Hotel.  Since I don’t dress up often, this process probably took a lot longer than it would for regular people.  But I digress; the Colorado Language Arts Society was holding their Regional Spring Conference and I was on the books as a co-presenter with my favorite teacher of all time, Tim Hillmer.

Here’s a picture of us at the conference, looking totally professional and beautifully coiffed:

At the conference, me (Lara) and Tim

Tim was my 6^th and 7^th grade Language Arts teacher.  I was 11 years old in 1984 and it was his first year teaching (I had no idea, all adults look old to kids and I figured he was old too).  My family life was turning upside down after a horrible incident of domestic violence, and my parents were going through a hideous divorce that dragged our family through the entire gamut of the legal system.  Meanwhile, Tim was navigating the hell of being a first-year teacher in a basement classroom with a crazy shop teacher that liked to tell “female jokes”.  After three weeks of school the 8^th period class had an uprising.  They stood on their chairs and yelled “We’re going to get you fired!”  That was his impetus for throwing out the worksheets and starting us on a curriculum of creative writing that changed the way I learned and wrote. I wrote 10 or 12 stories from various perspectives and genres, and played with the format of poetry.  I adored writing stories.  When my family life was tumultuous and I could barely function in school, I went to his class and wrote.  Writing kept me anchored to the “here and now”, when life all around me was falling apart.

When I left 7^th grade we lost contact. And then 25 years later, I saw his name in the Daily Camera, our local newspaper.  He was going to be the keynote speaker for a Relay for Life Cancer Rally at Monarch High School because he has prostate cancer.  I emailed him, he wrote back, and we met for coffee shortly thereafter.  Through many conversations and cups of coffee, we meandered our way back to those two years that we were in class together and started “studying” the teacher-student relationship.

That’s the basis for the presentation we gave yesterday.  We used our teacher-student relationship as a way of illustrating the usefulness of putting ONE teacher-student relationship “under the microscope and examining what works, what doesn’t work, and what strategies might be tried”.  We emphasized that it isn’t realistic for middle or high school teachers to try to study all 150 students that blaze through their classroom each year, but that there is merit in looking at one or two students and figuring out how they look at giving feedback, how they can encourage more writing, and most importantly, how they can build trust, the most essential piece of all.

We each read a few original pieces we’ve written, and wove the written essays/stories into the narrative.  We jumped through time here and there, offering memories from 25+ years ago, lessons learned since then, and then spoke about the present time.  I thought I was going to be nervous because I don’t normally care for public speaking, but it actually wasn’t bad at all.  Tim and I practiced our presentation several times, and even used our spouses as our first “live audience”.  We’ve talked so much about the material, and examined it in such minute detail, that I was not so much worried about forgetting something as I was about talking too much and going over on time.

When I was a kid, Tim Hillmer created a safe place in school for me to write.  I became a writer under his guidance.  I left school, grew up, had kids, and did a lot of living.  He left the school where we met, had kids, wrote two books (The Hookmen and Ravenhill), and continued as a teacher.  His health took a turn for the worse and he stopped writing.  As we were reconnecting he asked if I was still writing; I told him about this blog.  He told me that I was the basis of two characters in his book Ravenhill, and that our time in the classroom together solidified how he now teaches writing.  Our friendship and connection deepened, and as we discussed writing a memoir about our parallel lives during those pivotal two years, I started opening up even more as a writer.  He wanted to write, but something was always in the way.  Now, maybe as a part of the process of preparing for this presentation, he is ready to delve into writing again.  At the conference yesterday he honored me deeply by saying “This has come full-circle.  I’m writing now, again, because of you.”  The teacher teaches the student, the student teaches the teacher.  Full circle.  The circle of life.

Thoughts are still swirling in my head about this.  It was a fabulous experience, presenting to a group of Language Arts teachers about my favorite subject with my favorite teacher.  I am in utter awe of the work these teachers do, and the curiosity they bring to this conference in order to share ideas and wisdom.  To have been a part of that was an utter joy and privilege.  Thank you, Colorado Language Arts Society, for allowing me to be a part of your conference, and THANK YOU to each and every teacher that shows up, day after day, ready to teach.

I’ve been sidelined from running for about a week now because of my cold but today, I was ready to run!  I took a few tissues and stuffed them in the pocket of my pants because guess what?  I didn’t even have to wear a jacket because it was already 30 degrees and getting warmer by the second! March has started with a bang and in the 7 days since I’ve welcomed a Colorado morning from the better side of my bedroom window, the world has come alive again.  Geese honked overhead as I left my house at 6:45 this morning.  Birds chirped in the bare branches of the cottonwoods and when I brushed by a tree while sidestepping the remnants of ice on the Greenbelt path, there was a thickening of buds on the branches.  The icing on the cake of this magical morning was the surprise that awaited me on Davidson Mesa.  Can you guess what it was??  It was mud.  There was mud on the trail of Davidson Mesa.

You heard right!  There was MUD!!!  Not only is the snow and ice starting to recede, the ground is warming up!  My shoes squished a little as I ran the three mile loop.  No prairie dogs greeted me, but there was a huge uptick in the hoards of runners that were out and about this fine morning.  On average this winter, I’ve seen maybe one person per run; today I think there were about TEN different groups of people on the route!

And now, while I sit here at my computer staring out the window at my backyard, two cute little  birdies are considering the merits of making a nest in the abandoned metal candle-holder thingie that has been here since we moved in almost five years ago.

I’m a week into this blasted cold and still not having any fun.  There is NO WAY I can even attempt a run, or any cardio of any kind.  My head is stuffy and the goo has made its way into my bronchials.  When I lie down at night, a persistent tickle occurs and I cough incessantly.  (Pity my poor husband, who’s a light sleeper.  I left the room last night but he still heard me coughing.)

All that being said, I’m not convinced I need an antibiotic yet.  I took some cough medicine this morning and a decongestant, and plan to leave it at that for the moment.

So my big question is, when do YOU know you need antibiotics?  What’s the defining moment when you finally throw in the towel and say “I’m not getting any better, I must have a bacterial infection.”

I tend to wait until I feel like death warmed over (this takes about 10 days to fully kick in), and then it’s another week of recovering from that snot-induced, cough-racking place where I’m utterly exhausted and worn down.  And, how does a person keep the virus from turning bacterial?  I know I’m a slow learner, but I’m still trying to find that magic tipping point and keep myself on the viral side of things.  So far, not working so well.  Do I keep trying, or is that the very definition of insanity, to keep doing the same thing and expect different results?

 I think the title says it all.  Running hills with a cold is truly a BAD idea.

I gave it a good shot on Wednesday morning.  I’ve been fighting a cold for the past four days and I was pretty tired of the whole thing, so I went out for a run.  Wednesdays have become my unofficial “high mileage” days, mostly just because it works into my schedule like that.  This Wednesday however, I was thrilled to get a weensy 6 miles under my belt.

I started the run thinking that I would do a 7-8 mile loop, but once I reached the half-way point of the “long hill” in Louisville, I actually stopped and reassessed my situation.  There were 5 tissues in my pocket (I can’t do the farmer’s blow to save my life, it’s disgusting to watch me try) and I had already used two of them.  My heart was beating way too hard and a sinus headache was knocking at the door.  I decided to be smart about my running and heretofore, stick to the flats and whatever downhill I came to on the circuitous route home. 

I was 2.2 miles in when I realized I couldn’t do the hills.  I do this route at least once a week; it’s a long 3 miler that has a very gradual incline for the first 2 miles, then a much more steady incline for the last mile.  Usually I’m barely breathing hard; yesterday I had to stop.  It wasn’t that my head was so packed full of snot.  Actually, it was because I was starting to get light-headed and my heart was racing too fast.  This was the not-so-subtle cue that I was indeed sick and yes, I needed to back off the pace.

So the lesson here is:  if you REALLY need to run when you’re sick, try to keep it on the flats.  You don’t need to be doing huge hill work to prove what a brute you are.  The fact that you’re getting your heart rate up is good enough.  Save the hill work for when you’re healthy.