For Good Measure

I have swagger.

I do. I have for a while now. 

Recently, as I was looking at an ancient photo of 8 year old me, I saw myself in her eyes and thought, “I’ve finally grown into the woman that girl was meant to be.” She was brimming with swagger.

I don’t want to get into the details about where my swagger went, but for most of my adult life my swagger has been muted. It was there though, stuck to me, like a piece of lint on a wool coat.

Too small to use, too insignificant to get rid of, it sat there unnoticed until I took up running.

That’s when I started feeding it.

And little by little it grew into something worthwhile. I nurtured my swagger, I listened to it as it started talking back to the negative inner voice that haunts so many of us. Eventually my swagger started forming opinions on many things; it weighed in on my life choices.

It kicked the negative inner voice in the face a couple of times for good measure.

This week I realized that my swagger was my vulnerability.
This week I realized that my swagger is my vulnerability.

I embraced it, accepted it, and nurtured it, and because of that, I was able to achieve more. My swagger is the sword I used to beat back shame.

It is shame that told me I was a failure; it is shame that told me I should be afraid. 

Every day that I go out to run with Those People I Don't Know, I fail. I fail to keep up.  I fail to run as fast as they run. In short, I am a failure.

If keeping up is the measure of success, then I am a failure.

But what if LIFE is the measure of success?

In failing, I am living. In my failure I find laughter, I find strength, and I find the courage to go out and fail again.

I would rather epically fail trying to improve myself, than to sit on the sidelines waving a flag of mediocrity and watch as life passes. Certainly if I quit running with Those People I Don't Know, I won't fail anymore, but at least as a failure, I am in the mix.

My swagger's opinion is that the only way to succeed is to fail at something, and still show up tomorrow to run again.

~ savor the run ~   

Dead A** Last

I over-slept this morning.  I was toying with the idea of randomly showing up on the fly to run with my friend SpeeDee.  She’s usually at a particular intersection at 5:20 a.m.  I didn’t give her a heads up though, because I was so tired after my day of work yesterday that I thought, if I wake up and am too sore to run, I’ll stay in bed and run later.  

So yeah.  That was my half-formed half-assed mental plan as I set my alarm and dozed off.

I bolted awake at 4:56 a.m. with a catchy alarm tune singing in my ear, my heart in my throat, and a run on my mind.

I need to run, I said, as I flew out of bed.  I tossed, tugged, pulled and laced, and 7 minutes later I was outside... walking my dogs.

C’mon dogs... c’mon!  I’ve got to...  there’s no way I’m making it to SpeeDee’s run.  Aaaaannnddd I think I knew that when I got dressed in these running clothes, but at least I made the effort.

There’s another run that goes from the same intersection at 0530 and I knew I could still make it.  Oh freaking five thirty.  I’ve never tried to run with them before.  I know they’re fast.  Ed and Harry Potter are frequently among them and there’s a little voice that echo's my old sentiments, “no way am I trying to run with Those People...” 

Except lately I’ve been advised to tell my inner voice to STFU.  That the little inner voice is holding me back from great things.  So I declared to myself, as I buckled my seatbelt and yanked the car into drive, “The Inner Voice of Sense and Reason is to be ignored for the rest of today”. 

Starting at 0505 this morning, I put her on mute.

Maybe not my best idea, but let’s not get off topic.

I drove to the Rogue Run thinking, Why the F*ck not? Right?  May as well go kick my ass this morning, and why worry if I don’t know the route?  Why fret if I don’t know who will be there?  Or that the people I do know will be there are blistering fast runners?  I mean, Hey, what could happen?

I'm GBA gf.  I’ve got this.

I so did not “got this”.

Mile 1 was an 8:45 ish pace....  That was the warm up?  After that, things got interesting.  I worked every single step of the run.  Every. Single. Step.

The group has a system for mixing paces called “back to last”.  The fastest runners occasionally loop all the way back to the end of the pack to “pick up” the last runner.  Then they run off again, and loop back again.

Good stuff.

Great.

Awesome.

Except for the part of the morning that went like this, “Are you last?”

“Yep,” I replied.  “Last.... that’s me.... ”

That was not an awesome feeling.

Mentally, this was a challenging place to find myself.  I’m not that slow, am I?  I mean, as I looked down at the 8:18 on my watch and watched the group pull away from me like I was yogging (I think it's a soft j), I thought, “butbutbutbut... I’m running a freaking 8:18!”

And then I thought -

So, you're running a freaking 8:18?  It seems that to keep up with them this morning you need to be running a freaking 8:00.  Pick it up, G.

Each time the group circled back to last, and lest we forget, I was dead ass last, I would try to push my dead ass last self a little harder.

I barely held it together at points.  It freaking sucked to watch them blow past me and pull away again and again.  I wanted to cut the route short, but I knew that if I kept pushing to hang onto the group that my dear friend LongLegsLeslie (3L) would loop back to me, and WineNOTwhine (WnW) would be near by to encourage me.  I thought, I’ll borrow some energy from Harry Potter as he runs by me next time.  MTT Coach Michael escorted me up a long dark hill, feeding me words of strength as we climbed.

I remember thinking that this was a hard run, maybe the hardest run of my life, because it is mentally difficult to watch the group pull away.  I suppose some people would quit; some would choose to cut the route and go a different way.

That's not where I let my head go.  I wanted to be in the group.  I wanted to go faster, to push harder.  I was hungry for the pain that accompanies running faster than one's comfort zone.  I wanted to run side by side, in the conversation, rubbing elbows with the pack.

Mental toughness today wasn’t about the run. 

It was about hanging on to the hard effort even though my effort would only ensure that I was still dead ass last.  I didn’t really finish dead ass last, exactly.  The last group of “back to last” nestled me into the fold and we all ran in together... at an 8:25.

Brook, another runner I don't know at all, said, "What was the mileage?  My watch must've thought it was a hard run too, 'cos it died."

I looked down and my mouth formed a little "oh".  

While the "back to last" gang must've run further, I still managed to knock out 7.20 miles in 1:03:07.  not bad, not bad at all.

Today at the end of the run I was raw.  My legs felt like ground beef... beef that had been pounded with a mallet... and possibly fed to some carnivore...  I flopped on a chair near some other runners in the brightly lit coffee shop.  The buzz of endorphins was as impossible to miss as the caffeine in my cup.  It felt good to hurt that bad in the company of others.

Despite the pain and misery of the morning, as soon as I got home I looked at my calendar.  I wanted to know when I could have the privilege of being dead ass last again.

~ savor the run ~ respect the distance ~

The Year of the 5K: Day 1

I love data.  I love it.  I like to look at metrics and trends.  Of course, the ONLY way to look at trends is to A) Set a baseline for comparison.  B) Collect data.

Today I ran my first 5K of my Year of the 5K.  It’s been a LONG time since I’ve raced a 5K.  I figured the best way to launch my Year of the 5K was to just run one cold to see where I am.

5K's hurt. But let's not skip ahead.

I selected a Richmond Road Runners Contract Race that benefited a local YMCA charity.  I like running the club or contract races because I feel like they’re well organized.  Also, the course is one I’ve run a few times, so I am familiar with it and knew the topography.

Since it was less than two weeks since Steamtown Marathon, I wore my marathon race shirt.  I figured that way, if I was slow, I was at least wearing a shirt that proved I’m a badass.

I arrive early, registered, and ran about a mile warm up with some high knees and butt kick drills, as well as a few pick ups.

I decided to run without a watch today and just go on effort.  The goal was to run at “Max” effort for as long as I could.  I lined up a little off the start line because I knew I wasn’t going out to win it.

It wasn’t awful.  It was miserable.  It hurt like a ‘mo-fo’, or a 5K, whichever actually hurts worse.  I had a good time.  I chased down a guy ahead of me, dropped the girl tailing me, and in all ran about what I expected.  Ok... ok, I ran 1+ minutes faster than I expected.  Pulled out a 26:15, thought I would run around a 28:ish. 

5^th female overall, 2^nd in AG.  It was a small race, but I’ll take it.

My IT band is still a bit sore as it turns out.  Who knew?

Anyways.  I’ve now got a baseline upon which to set my standard.  The goal is a 5K about every month or so.  

Also, have I mentioned that 5K’s hurt?

~savor the run~

Scaling Back

It started innocently.

I brought Garmin into my life to help track how far I was running at any given time and to help me learn to pace.  I told myself, “If I wasn’t going out too fast, I would have better running experiences.”

Garmin The First - circa 2010

What happened next was that I started racing myself, and Garmin was the means to track my races.  I know I’m not the only one.  “Hellz to the Yeah!  My best 5K split ever!” or “I just ran 20 miles with an average pace of what?!  That’s amazing!”  Garmin became my buddy.  She told me to push harder, faster, and to go longer (that’s what she said).

But at some point, the charm of my training partner started wearing thin.

“You used to be faster.”

“Wow.  That’s all we’re doing?  A X minute mile?  This feels really hard.”

“I know you think you’re pushing it, but you are capable of so much more than this.”

"You can't maintain this pace."

I realized recently that bringing Garmin on my run is like bringing my bathroom scale to a restaurant.  They’re both only focused on the numbers, and not at all able to see past them to evaluate the circumstances.  

They are metric based, and I’m more than a number.

Also, they're both bitches.

It doesn’t matter how fast I am today in relation to how fast I want to be on race day.  There’s no comparing Scranton PA in October to Richmond VA in July.  The weather is going to be different.

God willing, the air quality will be better.

But Garmin doesn’t care.  Just like Scale doesn’t care if I’m on steroids, or if I've eaten recently, or how much salt was in my dinner.

Scale has no mercy.  

And Scale will call me out for being fat in a hot minute, even though I think there are a lot of people who would pay to be as Obese as me.  

All Scale sees is a number.  Just like Garmin.

Garmin The Second

So right now, Garmin doesn’t get to come running with me very often.  If I’m on a mapped route... or running with pals who will help me pace...  or running at MTT, Scale, er, I mean Garmin stays home.  And I'm loving my run lately.  It's blissful again, even when it's hard.  Even when I want to lay down in the street in a puddle of sweat because my legs are so tired they want to quit, I still love it.  

I'm back to enjoying my run just like the good old days.  SpeeDee, Ninja, T and I are out on the streets laying down mile after mile of awesome.  So while there is a small part of me that wants to put the watch on to record my progress, the other part says, WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?  JUST GO RUN.

So, that's what I do.  I just go run.

Garmin and Scale focus too much on the metrics, and not enough on the joy of the moment, and if I'm not having fun, then why am I doing this?

Right?

Exactly.

~savor the run~

A gift: To Live a Life Without Fear

At any given time there are probably 63,291 posts on the Internet about Second Chances.

I'm sure a lot of them are focused on not giving them to Liars.  I suspect many are in favor of giving them to Children.  To Addicts.  To Runners.  To Dreams.  To Bad A** Mother Runners.

I was getting ready for my swim today and the thought that barreled through my head was how tremendously lucky I am, and that I'm so thankful I got a second chance at life.  

Two years ago I gave myself a chance to live a life without fear.  It was my gift to me; my second chance.  I decided that no one should live every day in fear of tomorrow.  All I had to do was have the courage to leap and hope that the fall into the abyss wasn't going to destroy me.

And I leapt 

and I fell

and I wasn't destroyed.  

I was reborn, for lack of a better way to put it.  I came back tougher, but softer at the same time, able to look at life without fear.  I arrived whole and able to love.  

It is such a relief to live a life that is, for the most part, free of fear.  That weight is gone, safely tucked two years in my past where it can no longer hurt me.  

I realized this week, that no matter what obstacles keep getting tossed in my face or at my feet, I have nothing to fear from that ugly past.  Everything will work out the way it's supposed to, and history has proven time and time again, that it will be so much better than I imagine.

~savor the run~

The Wall

"It is always cold on the Wall."

"You think so?"

"I know so, my lady."

"Then you know nothing, Jon Snow," she whispered.

― George R.R. Martin, A Dance With Dragons

This semester in Nursing School I was reminded that I am Jon Snow.  I know nothing tangible, except that The Wall is out there, somewhere. When winter gets here, I want to be on the correct side of the wall.

Any Marathoner finisher knows that the wall is in your head, and if you believe that you can get to the other side, you will succeed at finishing the event.

But the wall that knocked me to my knees recently is not the mental and physical exhaustion that goes with running for 4 hours. I hit The Wall about 25% of the way through my semester, and I hit it hard. I had a moment that I haven’t had in a long time, and I questioned whether or not I am smart enough to do what I’m doing.

Plenty of people graduate from nursing school every year... but a heck of a lot more than that START nursing school every year.  In fact, looking around the trenches at my fellow soldiers, and reflecting back on the fallen many in my class, I realize we have lost about 40% of those who started with us.

100% of those people had good grades at some point in their lives. Like me, they worked hard to get into school.  Like me, those folks took and passed classes before Nursing School that were prerequisite level classes intended to weed out the unworthy.

I typically compare the Nursing School experience to a marathon training plan.  The long miles getting ready for the big day wear you down physically and mentally, and on the particularly tough days you wonder - Why am I doing this? And, Will the end ever come? Or even, Should I be here?

So two weeks ago on Monday, I hit the wall when I failed a few assignments that I was well prepared for, which scared me. If I don’t study and fail, I deserve to fail. If I study until my eye twitches, I figure, it’s a problem with my brain....  And it wasn’t one thing, it was multiple assignments in different classes.

I sat in front of that wall and looked at it’s 700 feet of un-scalable ice covered rock and I began to cry. I tucked myself into a corner and sobbed until my throat was raw and my tinny voice sounded like that of a stranger. I let the tears flow until no more came.  

And I then I blew my nose, washed my face, gathered my tattered self-esteem around me like a flimsy cloak, and I stood in the shadow of the wall.  I tried to tell myself “I am McGyver. I have a cloak, some books, and a Smart Phone. I can climb, tunnel through or fly over this wall. I can.”

It was at this point that I tried to go have a thoughtful conversation with someone important to my academic success... and as I attempted to push words past a growing lump in my throat, I knew there was no hope for me... and I cried some more.

I wanted to quit.

I desperately wanted to lie down in the dirt and sleep for a week and see what happened if I checked out of my world. Because maybe the wall would melt in a week's time, or another student could pull the wall down, or... something...

Of course that is NOT what I did.

I gathered the others on the wrong side of the wall and we began to formulate a plan. We made lists and charts. Bit by bit, we scaled the wall using the will and ingenuity of the students in the group. Shared energy led to success, and shared success led to energy. 

Phone calls were made. Homework was finished. Dogs were walked. Breakfast was eaten. 

Above all else, the flames of panic were smothered under the wet blanket of determination.

Today is Friday. The first week of midterms are done, and there are more to come next week. But, I’m not feeling worry about that right now.

The view from the top of this wall is not so bad. I’ve made it here, and I can see the finish. All I need to do is just keep going (TWSS).

Yesterday’s failure is in the past sitting beside Yesterday’s accomplishment. I can’t dwell on the success or the failure; I must focus on the now and do what needs to be done today to prepare for the next test.  Worrying about tomorrow’s difficulty is a waste of energy.

Today I will enjoy the view, because today is the day that matters.