Mother’s Day Plans

As part of my on-going quest to prioritize my life and get my head screwed on straight (I know I know, good luck with THAT, right?) I’ve done a few things over the past few days that are note-worthy:

1.  I wrote a fictional vignette of a runner.  This is loosely based on a run I did a few days ago in a windstorm, though is NOT me.  The point of the exercise was to change my perspective, quite literally, away from MY inner life and focus on what I MIGHT have seen, had I watched another person running in the windstorm.

2.  I’ve decided to write a four-part series of Motherhood and Running.

3.  I’ve signed up for my first race of the year; the 2010 Title 9 Mother’s Day 10K at the Boulder Reservoir.

I’ll start with the last point.  It took a lot for me to commit to this race.  I haven’t been running consistently or well these past few months; it’s been totally sporadic and mushy.  Some days are stellar, like the 10K I ran two days ago.  My Garmin clocked that run at 44:32, averaging 7:28/mile.  And then other days I can’t get my legs to pull out anything faster than an 8:45/mile for three miles.  I haven’t done a 10 miler in ages, and am not Half-Marathon ready.  I like to have a base fitness level that would let me do a Half within a week or two, and I’ve lost it.

As well, I think the race is over-priced.  It cost $44 for the pleasure of running this race and getting a tech shirt in the goody bag.  I’m the only one of my friends who will be racing Sunday and mostly, it’s because of the cost.

Bill and I discussed the cost for a good long time.  When I balked at the price he said he was planning to get me a gift that costs more, and that if I really wanted to race then we’ll call that my present.  Then he started hounding me every day, pestering me to see if I had registered yet.  It seems he would like me to get out of my slump and back on stable ground.

Is all this really about a RACE?  Well, not really.  It’s more about the idea that I’ve gotten far away from the grounded person that I was, and that running is such an integral part of me that I need to re-incorporate it back into myself.  The fact that this is a Mother’s Day race is apropos because I’ve pulled back from every activity that takes time and energy away from my kids, family, and writing.  On Mother’s Day we celebrate the Moms in our lives, and we as Mother’s are celebrated.  For runner Moms, sometimes the best celebration is when the family shows up to cheer for us as we run our little hearts out.  On Sunday, this will be the case with me.

I doubt I’ll race particularly well, or that I’ll beat my time of 42:58 (it was a 9K back in 2008).  The weather forecast calls for good racing weather (cool, overcast but not rainy) and the race doesn’t start until 9am.  Plenty to time to eat an actual breakfast, hydrate, and let it exit my stomach so I’m not bogged down.

The second point dovetails on racing on Mother’s Day.  I realize that I’ve been writing this blog for over two years and I have rarely touched on topics that relate to my kids or family life.  I’ve tried to keep my writing centered on who I am outside of my family, and that isn’t an entirely accurate picture of who I am as a woman and as a runner.  Those things are so intertwined, and as part of my effort to take time to delve deeper into my inner being, I think these things need to be addressed.  Therefore, I’m going to break down the discussion into four topics; Training with (or around) Kids, Nutrition after Babies, Hormonal Fluctuation, and Running with Kids. 

I’ve kept the details of my life pretty private (which is strange to think given that I’ve written about some really private thoughts), so this is a 2-minute summary of my life and a little bit about where I got to the place I am today.

My name is Lara.  I’m 37 years old and have been a runner for about 4 years.  I ran in middle school and stopped when my coach told us that we were never going to beat this up-and-coming runner named Melody Fairchild (yeah, Melody Fairchild, the fastest high school girl to ever run cross country in the U.S.), and there was no use trying.  I took up theater in high school because I didn’t like competing and went to college on a theater scholarship, earning a double degree is Cultural and Critical Studies, and Theater.  After college I worked at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts (DCPA) as a Stage Hand on traveling road shows for two years.  I got married at the age of 24, moved to Steamboat Springs with my husband, and started an Internet Service Provider with two friends.  Two years later I had my first child; S.  We moved to a townhouse about 30 minutes outside of Steamboat and our second child, C, was born in July of 2002.  Within seven months we moved back to the Front Range of Colorado and were living with my Mom while we tried to sell our townhouse and Bill transitioned into a job with the same company in a local office.  His job didn’t work out and he commuted back to Steamboat while the kids and I stayed in Boulder.  S started pre-school, I made a few friends, and began hiking with my dog in the evenings after Mom came home and the kids were in bed.

When C was two I started grad school, pursuing a Master’s in Environmental Policy and Management (I graduated in November of 2007).  Bill found a job in Denver and lived with us full-time again.  The townhouse finally sold and, after living with my Mom for two and a half years, we moved to Louisville into the house where I grew up (Mom kept it as a rental for 15 years and was eager for us to live there and help maintain it, and in return would reduce the rent slightly).  This was a good deal for us since I was in grad school, S was in pre-school and Bill was starting his own computer consulting business.  Money flowed out faster than it was coming in, but we decided that this was okay because we were moving in a positive direction.

I started running shortly after we moved to Louisville.  My dog, Kirby, had gained an obscene amount of weight while living at Mom’s, and she now resembled a walking ottoman.  Children at the park pointed to her and screamed, “Look Mommy, a cow!”  I was worried she would keel over from a heart attack and was determined to help her shed the weight.  Thus, we started running.  It started with a short walk up the greenbelt to the pond, a jog around the pond, and a walk back home.  I was shocked at the jiggle in my trunk and how hard Kirby panted.  A few days later, we did it again.  And thus, my running days commenced.

Kirby lost 20 pounds (it helped that she wasn’t sneaking cat food at all hours of the day) and I lost the last 10 pounds of baby weight that had padded my hips and butt.  Now when I run, Kirby stays at home.  She’s almost 12 years old and prefers walks.  S and C are now 10 and 7; they do Fitness Club at school, as well as basketball and soccer.  They ride bikes, fly kites, play tag, jump on the trampoline, climb so high in trees until I can’t look anymore, and a million other things that keep them moving from the second they wake up until the time when I firmly close their bedroom door and say “Good night”.

I started writing this blog as a way to slow down time.  I didn’t want to focus on my kids, mostly because it would make me cry because of how fast they were growing.  I wanted to focus on something that was all mine, a place in time where I was just me.  Not a mother, not a wife, student, daughter, gardener, maid, caregiver, or any of the other labels that could so easily hang around my shoulders at any given moment.  When I run I am simply a woman testing the limits of her being, and that’s why I haven’t brought much of my other “stuff” to this blog.

In working through the negative spaces of my psyche and trying to figure out where I am and where I’m heading, I need to embrace all those other pieces as well, and see where they fit into the mix.  I write this blog through the seasons, but there are also seasons of my life where other people’s lives intersect with mine.  By examining Motherhood and where I stand within its boundaries, I hope to gain a better perspective on yet another aspect of who I am as a woman, runner, Mother, writer, and passionate human being. 

With all that being said, I’m happy to answer questions that might come up!  Send me questions at Lara @ saturdaymorningzen .com and I’ll do my best to answer them.