Archive for the ‘2009’ Category

“Brrrrrrrr-ing!”  The Time Out Clock announced that I can run again.  A small waif of a pain lingers in the shin.  Something to watch, ice, and proceed with caution.  However, I ran and hopefully this means I am returning to running.  A long, short three week vaca from the two stepping travel.  Although I have been sweating up a storm with enough gusto to make any hamster dizzy on stationary exercise machines, hard earned fitness has slipped away quickly.  Oh, it will come back, and hopefully with friends, but my first run back reminded me of two things.  First, I love to run!  Second, gravity knows my name and address.  Right foot, left foot, trot trot trot, easy it goes, nice and slow.  My feet felt oddly heavy and non-supportive of the activity that the body wanted to do.  My mind has not changed a lick.  She wanted to rip out into a fast pace, floating along trails, skipping over rocks, and challenging the body to keep up.  The greyhound in my head looked down to see poodle paws.  Trot, trot, and finally poof, walk, yap. 

And it has only been three weeks!  My inner mini-cheetah must still be in Aspen or something.  I think she has a time share there.  However, what joy the simple outdoor movement of huffing along in sneakers has brought me.  Breathing in the wet air ripe with scents of eucalyptus and dirt, exhaling stress.  Stress?  It has been a lovely quiet Christmas what stress could I possibly have.  Ummm, hello, any good type A can always find something to stress over.  What about the silver lining in everything?  Oh yes, of course, that outlines the stress!

I have had a wonderful, challenging, and successful 2009.  The beginning of the year brought disappointment as I got sucked into the black hole of anemia, lost our rental home, performed  poorly at Carlsbad, moved to a new home that almost burned down…..but did not!  By the middle of May, I was looking to turn the year around.  The State Street Mile untapped a new runner in me.  Crossing the line in third, I was so ecstatic at my time that someone asked me if I knew that I did not win.  Yes, I was aware.  Did you see that clock?  My legs do not go that fast!  Oh, yes they do!  I got to see that runner three more times the rest of the year.  She came out on a quiet friday night to the All Comers Carpinteria Track Meet where I took 4 seconds off my 800 meters PR and then turned around and took 15 seconds off my 3K time like I was out for a Sunday run.  She showed up to Westmont and flashed the hook ‘em horns sign as she took the finish line.  Finally, she came back to me at the Santa Barbara International Marathon.  Thanks for giving me four fabulous races!  Thank you so much, so so much, that I would like to push the envelope and ask her for more appearances in 2010.  I dusted off the doormat and I can pull out the sofa if she would like to move in permantly and not just visit.  Heck, she can have my bed!  I’ll take the sofa. 

I think I am being reasonable.  Last year, I resolved to hit 17:15 in the 5K and 36:30 in the 10K.  I did neither, despite being thrilled by the above listed races.  Naturally, those two numbers roll over to the 2010 hit list.  I am starting out with a lower fitness level than last December 31st, but as both Jim and Rusty have said, go backwards to go forward.  OK, I got the backwards part.

2010 hit list has several more numbers scribbled on there too.  It took me a year to figure out proper nutrition, proper sleep, efficient and fun training, and lastly perspective.  I learned a lot in 2009, but most importantly, I think I found perspective.  I can handle the downs well enough to make sure that I truly enjoy the ups.

So here’s to hopefully a bunch of running “ups!”  Happy New Year’s Eve!  I am off to trot or walk or both, but I am out!  Yippee!

Pony Power

Christmas day, I walked three laps around the rose gardens at the mission with pain.  Boxing day I briskly walked after my two year old peddling a tricycle through Shoreline park with no pain.  Naturally, I am therefore cured!  OK, maybe not, but that did not stop me from taking the next step.  Let’s see, Rusty said, “No running until it is perfect.”  Perfect?  Nope.  Let’s see, so again, Friday I walked about 1/27th of a mile, Saturday I walked about half a mile, so yep, yes, okee dokee smokey, Sunday I am surely ready to strapped my toddler to my back and hike her from my house up to Inspiration Point and then back down making the loop. 

Hey, I did not run.  Remarkably, the left shin felt pretty close to normal, but ah-ha Running Gods laugh, the right calf squawked for attention precisely to the point behind the knee.  Or maybe that is normal for carrying a singing thirty pound load for four hours door to door?  Another round of ice bartender please!

In addition to singing Frosty the Snowman, pretending I am a dwarf from Snow White, and picking wild flowers only to have them beaten against my head by the traveling misses, I was officially deemed “Mommy the Pink Pony.”

“Pretend you are a pink pony and I the baby, a-kay?” she says in her adorable sugary chatter.  The silver lining on the morning shined so bright, I needed some cheap sunglasses.  The last time I hiked with my daughter was over a year ago.  I have been too busy running!  We covered all my favorite Santa Barbara terrain at a gingerly sweet & slow pace and it was magical.  A year from today, she will most likely be too big for me to Sherpa along.  Wait, a minute, [crack] oh, yeah, she’ll be too big.

We toted her prized poochie D.O.G. aka Van Douglas or just the one and only doggie along for the ride.  Like a traveling gnome, he had some good times.

Sing it Snow!  Hi-HO!

Freshen Up!

D.O.G.

Maybe it is for the pleasing of others, maybe it is because I can be anything but idle, whatever reason rocks your crockpot, I cannot stop cooking.  My family is loving this injury that suddenly turned an always out the door mom on the run to one that they not only cannot get rid of, but that does not stop plopping home cooked happiness into their gullets.  Kill them with kindness?  Or maybe just a variety of gluten free baked goods.  Gulp.  We are going to have to knock this out in the new year.

Christmas eve is a perfect opportunity to feast on something special.  I made out my menu and sent my husband to “hunt” up the ingredients.  Rosemary crusted rack of lamb, five spiced fingerling potatoes, and warm beet salad with toasted pecans rounded out our table.  I chopped and smeared and flipped boned Mary’s pet around on my prep plate all the while singing Away In A Manger.  Suddenly, I had to pause as I wondered if there was some taboo at eating lamb on Christmas.  Afterall, Jesus is the Lamb of God.  Oh Baaaaaa-humbug and the answer is apparently no, happy birthday Lamb of God, Mary pass the mint, and sheep is a nice sweet meat.

I gnawed guilt free on succulent chewable fat.  Although, I may avoid a petting zoo for a little while.  At Christmas eve service, my son draped a lamb costume on backwards from his little blonde head and then proceeded to baaa and baaa and baaa, baaa, baaa, during a re-enactment of the nativity.  The Christmas tree glowed in the back ground and he bleated about a giggling Mary and Joseph.  There is nothing like holy irony.  Oh Holy Night.  [Burp] Excuse me, lamb, hmmmm need a mint.  Perhaps that is why there are candy canes?

Sherpard’s staff?  Lost sheep?  Poor sheep.  Before you judge, who got UGG boots for Christmas?  Ah? A-ha!

Christmas more than any other time of the year allows us to rejoice in our blessings.  If you can by pass the holiday fudge, bandage up the paper cuts, zen through the traffic, ignore the credit card bills, the honey glazed ham, the gingerbread men with M&M eyes that seem to be made only for you, then maybe you can find the time to sit back and sip in all your hard work and all the joyous gifts that you probably knew you had, but maybe, just for a little while you forgot how much they really glisten.

Each year finds me happier than the next.  What an amazing thing to age into joy.  Of course I could be just on one side of the hill, in that case, do not inform me because I like the climbing part the best.  I walked my children past the library and as my eyes followed a being running left and another little one turning right, my ears picked up the conversation of two shabbily dressed gentlemen sitting on a stone step.

“Happy people see the silver lining,” one man says to the other.  “It is their positive nature that when they get bad news, they see the good.  Sad people see the bad in everything.”  I almost wanted to ask them if they were talking to me.  Who sent you?

How many times have I failed to see all the beauty surrounding me?  Too many.  Daily life hum drums along and sometimes I cross an entire day off in the day planner with all the heartfelt joy of well, another one done.  It will not be long before I wish for all these days back again.

I think back to times that were difficult, really difficult, and I smile at the love surrounding me today.  This Christmas finds me more at peace than the last.  The last one more happy than the one before and the one before that.  My blessings are growing despite me sometimes neglecting to water the perspective.

My son races around the house dressed as Batman and whines about a “lost candy can.”  He tugs at my sleeve and whispers his masked face into my shoulder, “I need help!”  The tantrum grows over a missing hooked sugar stick.  I want to sit and write about all my Christmas joy!  Oh, ha, ha, I get it.

To the Bat mobile!

I cannot run.  I thought the shin would request two weeks off, but now I am thinking she’s going to plug for closer to a month.  I am not a patient patient.

I warned my class this morning that Santa is watching.  I threaten my son with those mighty words repetitively throughout the day.  Santa is watching?  God is watching.  My children are watching me.  The absence of ten days of running greatly affects my mood.  I think it will be better when I can at least go for a walk, but for now I punch the elliptical cycle like it insulted me personally.  I close my eyes while paddling my feet around and around ever closer to nowhere and I imagine that I am running up a wildflower speckled hill.

A shin splint is not a tragedy.  Suck in that lower lip Miss Priss.  Turn that frown upside down.  Don’t you have a pocket full of sunshine?  Why yes, yes I do.

I cannot do the Bikram.  I cannot lock my knee.  I am going back to the baking.  This afternoon the littles and I will be making:

Cherry cranberries, peppermint truffle brownies, gluten free cinnamon rolls, apple pie, cherry pie, and spicy carrot ginger soup.  That way our eyes will be fully keen to see all the sweets!