Let's Be Very Clear About the Goal

From the morning run. How can I keep from singing?

First, this clearly isn't going to be a "31 days in a row" kind of thing. There will be 31 posts, just not on consecutive days. I could probably write for several hours about all the reasons, but mostly, it can be summed up this way: I have a house full of kids. Many of them are teenagers. I find mothering teenagers and younger children at the same time to be an unpredictable, 24/7 proposition that makes the margins for writing exceedingly narrow. 

Now, let's talk about goals. Last time I wrote, I mentioned that my goal was to finish a 5K and run the whole thing. In the past couple days, I've re-examined that goal. Upon closer inspection, I see that it wasn't my primary goal. My primary goal was to banish depression. Remember? That's probably even what all the walking was about.

What I learned this week, on the bad run day and the day after it, is that I really do need sustained time in motion, preferably in the sunshine. I knew this week would be a hard one. I'm very familiar with anniversary reaction and this week--last year--was pretty terrible. I should have taken extra time to be sure to move more, not less.

Should have. But I didn't. I'd returned home from three weeks of traveling to three different places and I tried to scramble to put everything in order and get back on a solid academic schedule. There were four birthdays to celebrate, a funeral, and then a tailgate party to plan when Patrick was in town to play locally. I scurried. But I needed to rest. 

I was so tired and depleted on the day of the big game that when Patrick texted me from the locker, struggling with fresh waves of grief brought vividly to life by many memories of his grandfather over the course of Paddy's childhood in this very stadium, I was grateful for the rain. The dam broke for me, too. 

I didn't run the next day. I didn't even walk. I plodded through the chores and the ordinary movements of life. I drove to soccer and dance. I kind of wallowed. Gloom gathered. That bad run (that had been my last run) haunted me. It wasn't fun any more. Still, I knew I that had available to me a very powerful antidote to depression. I needed to find a way to make it work. There is science behind the quest to run every day:

““What we’re finding in the research on physical exercise is, the physical exercise is at least as good as antidepressants for helping people who are depressed … physical exercise changes the level of serotonin in your brain.

It changes, increases their levels of “feel good” hormones, the endorphins. And also — and these are amazing studies — it can increase the number of cells in your brain, in the region of the brain, called the hippocampus.

These studies have been first done on animals, and it’s very important because sometimes in depression, there are fewer of those cells in the hippocampus, but you can actually change your brain with exercise. So it’s got to be part of everybody’s treatment, everybody’s plan.””

I sat down with the calendar and mapped out the next day. I did it all on paper. (My digital rabbit hole is the subject for another day, but let's just say that time in front of the computer requires equal or more time away from it outdoors.) I decided that running the whole way was less important that moving for a longer period. So I planned a run with distinct, purposeful walk breaks every seven minutes. And then I also planned to walk a half hour when I finished the run. 

Much better.

Throw in the fact that we were down to one car and I walked another 6,000 steps in the neighborhood  throughout the day and I went to the gym to really stretch things out, and I ended the day on a much more even keel. 

The goal is to be healthy--in my brain and in my body. If I have to take a 1 minute walk break every 7 minutes for every run for the rest of my life, just so I can run long enough to get the anti-depressant effect, so be it. I've long suspected that I'm more about endurance than speed any way.

More about that tomorrow.

From the evening walk...

There will always be bad runs...

One thing runners tell me, just as they extol every good thing about running, is that there will always be bad runs. They will creep up on a girl just when she's feeling like this running thing is nothing but great. They come out of nowhere and legs  feel like lead and lungs burn--the same legs and lungs that felt so great just 48 hours prior to this run. 

I need a strategy for bad runs. It needs to be a different strategy than the one I have for bad weigh-ins. Yesterday, before I went on my bad run, I got on the scale. Up nine pounds. I blinked. Looked. Blinked again. Hopped off. Got back on. Up four pounds. Back off. Back on. Up two pounds. Enough of that. Clearly the scale has issues and it's determined to mess with my mind first thing in the morning. The scale has been pushed under my bed--all the way to the middle. There it will stay. No more bad scale days.

Bad scale days are days when three digits on a measuring device can determine my mood for eight hours or more. Those numbers often do not accurately reflect my efforts towards good nutrition or my intensity of exercise. They are capricious and seemingly out of my control.

That's what bad scale days have in common with bad run days. They just are. I don't cause them. I can't control them. Sometimes, despite all my best efforts, they just are. 

But I'm not relegating my running shoes to a dusty spot beneath the bed. Instead of avoiding bad run days, I'm going to apply some mothering wisdom to them. If nothing else, I've learned one thing in twenty-six years of mothering nine different personalities: I am in control of very little beyond my attitude and my openness to grace. 

I remember when my big boys were little ones. I wanted that magazine kind of house--the one where all the real, simple techniques worked in harmony to have a home where nothing was out of place and everything matched and no one ever lost a shoe. I began with the color coordination of everything possible.Every child was assigned his or her own color.  Michael was purple. Christian was blue. Patrick was red. Mary Beth, of course, was pink. Towels, cups, backpacks, jackets, boots--all color-coordinated. Worked wonderfully. Until someone threw up on his towel and refused to use his brother's because he'd been warned that he was only to use the blue things. It worked until the red sippy cup melted in the bottom of the dishwasher. It worked until they outgrew their coats and boots and protested when I handed them down to the next child in line. Now what? Total color switch? All I knew was that my lone little girl was going to wear red and blue coats for several winters--and she still talks about it mournfully, even as I buy bright florals for her sisters. The color coordination of everything was a total fail. 

Color coordinated cups have given way to a motley collection of water bottles. Some are carefully chosen in someone's favorite color. More are soccer tournament swag. Most are the generosity of Christian when he bought lovely, matching bottles for his whole basketball team, complete with a coordinating carriers. (Wonder where he gets that inclination?)

My reality is that lots of other attempts to control all the things failed as well. Large family mothering is an exercise in letting go. Every single day. The older they get, the less control I have. A bad teacher. A girl who breaks his heart even as he falls head over heels. An illness or injury that wipes out an entire season. A teammate who makes a critical mistake and ends the tournament. Even worse? The bad decisions my kids make all on their own. We won't list them here, but know that I have no control over them. They keep me awake at night. They are thoroughly discussed in heated conversations, but I don't have control. Sometimes, life in a big family feels like 26.2 miles of a bad run. 

There's no option to quit. The only option is a good night's sleep and a run again the next day. And the day after that. And on the good days, I inhale deeply and notice how bright and beautiful the landscape is around me. I take the time to thank God for the air filling my lungs and the knees that bend again and again without that pesky twinge. I share with Him my hopes and dreams and I do it thinking that maybe all will come to fruition. On the good days, I almost believe there will never be a bad run again. 

Almost.

On the bad days? I'm learning to keep running, or maybe to slow to a walk and refocus. I'm learning that life is a marathon and if I get all tangled up in every bad run and I let them get into my head,  they will quickly convince me that I am a bad runner. 

A bad mothering day, a hard mothering season? They don't make you a bad mother.

Just keep putting one foot in front of the other and know that God is in control.

I Almost Gave Up

This morning's run was supposed to be a  5 minute walking warmup, 22 minutes running, and a 5 minutes walking cool down. Since I'm running a little behind my intended 9-week schedule because of time taken to travel, I thought I'd get a little ambitious and skip to the following workout and run 3 minutes more. I want to finish the app program by the end of October and then just keep running 3 miles until the 5K on Thanksgiving. Last week's runs were all really good, so I was sure I could do the 22+ .

I also told myself I wasn't going to look at the app. I was just going to run until I couldn't run any more. Things got off to a good start; I got to the end of the asphalt that's right around the 10 minute mark, maybe a little more than 10 minutes and I felt decent. Then I didn't. I started talking to myself earnestly. I persuaded myself to run to the corner and then to the next corner. Nah. Not that far. I'll just run to the corner. Well, maybe not that corner. Maybe to the tree. Yes. Stop at the tree. 

Stop at the tree.

Look at the app.

15 minutes running time. Five minutes fewer than Santa Barbara. 

Oh, dear. Walking fast, I headed for the fitness trail, an internal battle raging in my head. Clearly, I'm not making progress. Clearly. I'm three weeks from the end of this training program and I'm no where near comfortable running 3 miles. I'm not cut out for this. Clearly. 

I continued to walk. The app chimed the end of the workout.

.63 miles walking. 1.19 miles running. 25 minutes. 

 I kept walking the trail. I've read a ridiculous number of running books. They seem to fall into two camps. In the first camp, there is gentle encouragement to walk/run/ waddle if necessary. It's all good. In the other camp, there is the keep pushing, hone your work ethic, reach your goal and set a new one philosophy. 

My body is in the first camp.

My head, my heart, and my soul, and every male in my family is in the second. We eat the second philosophy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It seriously never occurred to me that I would commit to a 5K and walk a single step of it. I'm going to run the whole thing. Or not run at all. 

Because I'm married to a man who has raised elite athletes and apparently it's rubbed off on me. 

So, after the app disclosed the dismal results of the day, I decided I'm not going to sign up for the 5K.

Still, I kept walking. Because I love to be outside and I love to walk, too. (I think I might love to run, just not very far?  I don't know. I can't even figure out why I stopped. I just stopped.)

I thought about all those really long walks last summer. I thought about the early runs, on this very same trail, where running a full minute seemed hard. I thought about Isabel. 

You see, I told my kids about the 5K, and Kristin rallied a whole bunch of them. They said they wanted to run it with Kristin and me. Mary Beth, who has yet to even start training but is in great shape, told her friend, Isabel. And Isabel has already signed up. I haven't registered my kids yet, but if Isabel's already in, I pretty much have to register them.

I thought about how hard it would be to go and just cheer them on from the sidelines. This running thing? 

It was supposed to be what I could do with them. It wasn't supposed to be from the sidelines. 

I forced myself to look up. And there, was my familiar trail, looking all golden in the morning light. 

Nearly eight weeks until Thanksgiving. These woods, this trail--they are going to light up in the next few weeks. I don't want to miss it. I want to be out there, anyway. Might as well keep trying to run it the whole way. 

The app isn't going to work. Until now, I've trusted the app, but I spent the next half hour of my walk, thinking it through and holding it up to what I know about my body. By the time I got home, I wasn't going to quit. I was going to revise the plan. I texted my friend Nicole and ran the new plan by her. She assured me I had time to get to a place where I could run the whole way and she found a printed plan that looked very much like the one I'd devised for myself. 

I'm still dubious. But in this house, we don't quit. And we don't walk. 

So, Wednesday morning, it will be time to head out anew and work a brand-new plan. 

Happy Birthday, Michael!

Last week went by in a blur. We returned from the west coast, celebrated four birthdays, grieved with dear friends, and went head over heels into Nutcracker season. 

I kicked off the 31 Days series (and already missed a day), but I didn't get the traditional birthday posts in. So, here's to catching up.

When I was 24, I was diagnosed with cancer. Michael was a baby then, 18 months old and still nursing when our lives turned upside down. It was a long year and he was very much aware. He's also been very much aware of the shadow that is life after cancer. I knew that. What I didn't know is that Michael has always been a little afraid of 24. In his mind, people get cancer when they're 24.

When he was 24, sure enough, cancer came knocking. But it wasn't Michael. And it wasn't me. It was Michael's best friend, Shawn. That made 25 very, very hard.

The fall of 25 held deep and gripping grief. First, Michael lost his beloved grandfather. Then, he watched his best friend slip away very, very quickly. 

When Michael was little, we were big fans of Solomon the Supersonic Salamander. He sang songs from Proverbs. Michael and I belted out the beat about "a friend who sticks closer than a brother" every time we drove any where. It was embedded into who he was. I had no idea how deeply and truly embedded.

Shawn had two brothers. They're great guys--strong, faithful, unwavering. But when cancer took that strong body and distorted it into a swollen, painful unrecognizable mess, a third young man stood vigil with them beside the bed. Closer than a brother, or at least as close. And when the cancer started talking nonsense and Shawn didn't sound like himself, Michael bantered back to the Shawn he knew. When Shawn went home to Jesus, Michael stood tall and bore witness to Shawn's witness. It was truly something to behold. 

A few weeks later, the light shone through the clouds. In the very early morning on April 25, Lucy Shawn was born. The towheaded boy became a Daddy. From the depths of grief to life's greatest joy, 25 was quite a year for my eldest son. 

He did a few other things with 25. He went to Brazil and covered the World Cup. He carved a niche for himself in the world of sportswriters and truly became a world class sportstweeter*, with over 117,000 followers.He got nominated for awards. He turned heads.  But when he looks back on 25, this will be there year that he lost Granddad and he lost Shawn, and he welcomed Lucy into the world.  

Big, big year.

Now, he's 26.

I pray for peace for you this year, my boy. Peace and all that is good. 

*this is how Nick refers to Michael's job. 

Inspiration as the Sun Breaks Through the Clouds

Unedited iPhone shots this morning. It's good to be home:-)

If one could run without getting tired, I don't think one would often want to do anything else.

--C. S. Lewis

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Remember, the feeling you get from a good run is far better than the feeling you get from sitting around wishing you were running. 

--Sarah Condor

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If you can fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance, run, yours is the earth and everything that’s in it, and — which is more — you’ll be a man, my son.

--Rudyard Kipling

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I always loved running…it was something you could do by yourself, and under your own power. You could go in any direction, fast or slow as you wanted, fighting the wind if you felt like it, seeking out new sights just on the strength of your feet and the courage of your lungs.

--Jesse Owens

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Believe that you can run farther or faster. Believe that you’re young enough, old enough, strong enough, and so on to accomplish everything you want to do. Don’t let worn-out beliefs stop you from moving beyond yourself.

--John Bingham

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Go fast enough to get there, but slow enough to see.

--Jimmy Buffett

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To be a runner is to learn continual life lessons. To be a coach is not just to teach these lessons but also to feel them in the core of your marrow. The very act of surpassing personal limits in training and racing will bend the mind and body toward a higher purpose for the rest of my runners' lives. Settling for mediocrity-settling instead of pushing-those who learn to be the best version of themselves know the secret to a full life.

― Martin Dugard