June 18, 2011

Running Streak

It occurred to me this morning that I could do a running streak until my divorce is final.  It could be anywhere between 30 and 60 days I suppose… could I possibly run that many days?  I’ve already put in four.   Would it be a big deal to run every day until the thing is finalized?  Could I mark time in a healthy way by staying present in the day, in the moment?  What would it feel like to process emotion by looking forward to each new day as homage to movement and joy?

I think I’d like to try.  I’ve always been wary of doing a streak for the sake of it, but this might feel good.  I’ve run for four days in a row (as of today).  I’m already sleeping better and strength is returning to my legs and core.  I’m feeling more like ME than I’ve felt for a while, and that’s the best reason to do it.

Today’s trail run was completely different than the one last week.  Last week I was a hurting unit.  My hips ached, I could barely lift my feet over the rocks, and I dreaded each and every downhill.  I couldn’t navigate the ascents and walked several of the descents.  My feet didn’t remember how to find secure footing on the rocks and my quads weren’t engaging.

Today, my body behaved like a runner’s body.  I’ve run six out of the past seven days, done two BRICKS in a row, and it’s showing.  My legs have more strength and some of my agility has returned.  My lungs did the ol’ in-and-out thing and I wasn’t exhausted after the long climbs into Eldorado Canyon.  I never had the urge to stop.  Motion felt so good… like coming home to a warm embrace.

The crickets were out in full force today.  Without the chatter of women around me I heard every nuance, and suddenly their chirping was a symphony behind lyrics that were stuck on Repeat in my head:

But I will hold on hope

And I won’t let you choke

On the noose around your neck

 

And I’ll find strength in pain

And I will change my ways

I’ll know my name as it’s called again

–“The Cave” by Mumford and Sons

 

The phrase “but I will hold on hope and I won’t let you choke on the noose around your neck” has been a mantra these last few months.  I don’t know how or why, but I’m holding onto hope that life WILL be better on the other side of all this, and I’m going to be okay in the end.

To that end, I’m going to do a running streak.  I’m going to run every day until my divorce is final.  No one will have to ask how many days until it’s done… just ask me if I’m still running.

 

Filed Under: Spring 2011 Tagged:
June 16, 2011

Phase Three- BRICKS

Nothing is stagnant in life, not even grief or hard times.  Everything in its own time, and then it changes.

At the beginning of the letting-go process, I had a ton of wild, unfiltered, crazy energy.  I ran hard… so hard.  And FAST.  And LONG.  I couldn’t help it.  It didn’t even feel like me, really.  It felt like I was watching a version of myself move through emotions that were sometimes viscous, sometimes fluid, and always raging.  As my heart processed emotions, so did my body.  Everything was working in tandem to release toxic heartbreak.  I felt like a big piece of cheesecloth; everything ran through me and out the other side.

The next phase was a slowing-down process.  I stopped moving so fast, hard, and long.  The many weeks of sleep deprivation was catching up to me.  I still ran, but more sporadically.  It still felt good to move, but many mornings I turned over in bed after a fitful night’s rest, or drank a second cup of Chai instead.

This past Sunday morning I entered the next phase.  It’s time to address my fitful sleeping, running and random eating times.  The weight gain around my tummy and butt is stretching my shorts tight, and I’m ready to get my head back in the game.  Time to drink more water, cut back on the vodka-fruit juice cocktails, and see what the summer holds.

I promised myself I would run, bike or MOVE somehow, even if it’s jump-roping and playing on the pogo stick with my kids.  The more I move the better I sleep, which makes me feel like moving more… a beautiful, healthy vicious cycle, one that I can totally live with.

As I lay in bed last night reading the chapter on “Grief” in my Divorce Recovery book “Rebuilding; When Your Relationship Ends”, I thought about running in the morning.  I had a two-hour block of time to get some exercise, and I decided to ride my bike to Bobolink, run a 10k, and ride home.  As long as I didn’t dawdle too much, I should make it home in time for a 10am phone call.

I read more about the different stages of grief, and considered each one carefully.

  1. Denial
  2. Anger
  3. Bargaining
  4. Letting Go
  5. Acceptance

Where do I fall within each one?

I fell asleep thinking about the stages of grief and putting my life back together.  Each has its own time.  Being the multi-tasking girl that I am, I usually do more than one thing at a time, weaving and layering and processing and planning and doing and watching and sitting… it’s all part of the same thing.  When I do something, I do it full-tilt.

I woke at 5:15 and dozed in and out until my alarm went off at 7.  I spent the next hour getting my kiddos fed and packed up to spend the weekend with their Dad.  At 8am I kissed them goodbye and ran upstairs to change into my running clothes and slather on the sunscreen.  Time to hit the road.

Not a single cloud in the sky and the air was warming up quickly.  I wore my Nathan hydration vest, Garmin, iPod and sunglasses.  The plan was to bike from Louisville to the Bobolink trailhead on Cherryvale and Baseline, run the out-and-back 10k, then bike my tired self back up the brutal hill into Louisville where I would coast down the eastern side and return home slightly before 10am.

This is not a difficult distance, don’t get me wrong; thousands of athletes do what’s called a Brick every day.  I just don’t happen to be one of them.  This sounded like a hoot though; I wanted to ride my bike, run for a while, and ride some more.  That’s all.

The ride from Louisville to Bobolink went smoothly.  My iPod was low enough that I heard all the traffic and the geese honking and I probably got bugs in my teeth from the big smile plastered all over my face.  The wind was absolute nirvana and I gave serious thought to never going inside a house ever again if it meant I could feel the sun shine on my shoulders until the end of time.

The Garmin clocked the ride at 18:36 for an average pace of 16.9 mph.  To all you serious cyclists out there- I don’t care that I’m slow.  I had a ton of fun.

I quickly locked my bike and headed onto the trail.  As is wont to happen after a ride, the legs felt heavy and it took a half mile of trudging to loosen up the hip flexors and quads.  I sucked on my water tube and took in the sights, just happy to be moving.

As I moved along the trail I stopped a few times to take pictures with my iPhone.  The sheer brilliance of the day was astounding to me, and I wanted to record visual images of the sensations coursing through this ol’ body.

Bobolink Trail

Front Range view from Bobolink Trail

 

I wasn’t running fast, just fast enough to feel good.  I didn’t bother looking at my watch to check pace or time.  Whatever data the watch collected would be there when I was home again at my computer.  I was firmly grounded in the moment, and loving every second of being alive on this bright late-spring morning.

The water is high!

Runner Girl!! :-)

I turned around a little ahead of the gate and headed back.  I don’t usually run in mid-morning on sunny days because it gets so warm, but today I just didn’t care.  I had plenty of water and I was completely content.  People were passing me, my shoes made this cool noise as I crunched the gravel underfoot, and I liked the way my shadow moved down the trail.

Back at the trailhead I checked the time on my Garmin: 9:32am.  Enough time to get home before 10am, not enough time to shower before the phone would ring.  Enough time to pour some Emergen-C in a glass and fill up on electrolytes, not enough time to towel off my sweaty back.  I said a big, fat “Oh Well!” and headed up the road.

My legs were tired now, though the spinning on the bike felt good.  The first ten minutes were a gradual climb, and then things got serious.  The next ten minutes I put the bike in an easier gear and concentrated on getting to the top of South Boulder Road.  Once there, I switched into the lowest gear on the bike and pushed it hard on the flat, gaining speed until finally the east side of the hill showed its face and I pedaled with everything I had, getting up to a max speed of 31mph as I flew home.

Walking in the house I checked the time: 9:55.  I made it.  I peeled off my gear, soaked my head in the kitchen sink, dried my face and hydrated with an Emergen-C and another glass of water before the phone rang.

It was so much fun, I’m thinking of doing another Brick tomorrow!

 

 

Filed Under: Spring 2011 Tagged: , , ,
June 3, 2011

Sunrise and Sunset

June 1st and the weather has changed from rain and cool temps to sunshine and warmth.  I ran yesterday morning in shorts and a wicking t-shirt, and rued the moment that I left the house without arm warmers.  Today, I’m happy as a clam in shorts and a t-shirt, sitting in the sun soaking up a year’s worth of Vitamin D on my sun-deprived face.

My love affair with the sun is not new.  I’ve worshipped the sun since the day I was born and my circadian rhythm is finely tuned to the nuances of the seasons.  When the world starts to brighten at the beginning of each new day my body relaxes into excitement at the hope.  When darkness falls, my mood shifts and I settle into the cave of my soul.

Dawn is always my favorite time of day though, no matter what the season.  Even when I’m tired or have a stressful day ahead of me, I’m glad to see the dawn and light of day.

The first poem I ever memorized talks about dawn and the metaphor of the new day; it’s called “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost, and was published in “The Outsider’s” by S.E. Hinton.

Nature’s first green is gold

Her hardest hue to hold

Her early leaf’s a flower

But only so an hour

Then leaf subsides to leaf

So Eden sank to grief

So dawn goes down to day

Nothing gold can stay.

In the book 16-year-old Johnny is contemplating the poem as he lies in a hospital bed with burns over much of his body and a broken back.  He talks to his friend Pony Boy about the poem and likens dawn to childhood, where everything is new and exciting, full of possibilities.  “Then leaf subsides to leaf…” – children grow up and stop being so excited about the world.  It’s predictable and has lost its newness.  People become jaded in the daylight of their lives.  The world doesn’t look exciting; it’s busy and we stop noticing the “gold” of the light and life in general.

Another of my favorite authors, Reg Saner, wrote a book called “The Dawn Collector”.  He rises before dawn each day and hikes up the mountain, collecting memories of new beginnings instead of watching sunsets, the demise of the day.  He says that he’s seen enough endings to last a lifetime; he’d rather witness newness and potential in every moment and collect those nuggets, to bring out and examine later.

The quality of light is different throughout the day, just as the quality of my energy is morphs through the course of the day.  In the morning I’m a new person, excited about possibilities and a day unexplored.  As the hours march forward I settle into a tempo and allow the momentum of the day to carry me.  Sometimes there are clouds in the sky and in my energy, and those pass overhead and through me as little bumps in the road.

At the end of the day I’m tired.  I’ve traveled far both physically and emotionally.  The Earth has rotated through half its cycle and the sunlight has changed.  The day has ended.  I enter a quiet phase, a reflection phases, and rest.

On a smaller level, my running has the same cyclical rhythm.  The beginning of each run is new and different, and I never know how it will end up.  Once I warm up I leave the “dawn” of the run, and enter a daylight phase that will carry me through the remainder of the miles.  Sometimes those miles are difficult, sometimes easy, but I never know how it’s going to look when I first begin.

The sunset of the run comes when I’ve expended my energy and am slowing down.  I’ve traveled far and seen a lot, and then it’s time to slow down and rest.  The activity allows for a calmness to occur, and I can finally rest, sated in my energetic output.

 

 

 

Filed Under: Spring 2011
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