Feeling my age

I came in to my new pursuit of running, confident and ready to tackle the task.

5K? 3 miles? No problem, I thought. I can easily walk it.

Then the reality hit that a 35-year-old woman, juggling a hectic schedule of work and family, can't just suddenly take on a new sport that easily.

At risk of sounding old, I can't run the whole distance and I've had periodic aches and pains, from my left hip to shin splints, to my current complaint of a sore right knee.

It's sometimes easy for me to forget that I am older. Time has gone by so quickly for me that I can't fathom that my son is 5, that I've been married 7 years, that I've been at the paper for 12.

But now my aging joints remind me, you're not a young chick, anymore!

Still, I am running, trying to keep to my schedule despite a brief bout with a cold, and am going forward with my first 5K this Saturday.

Signs of trouble

I'm really proud of how well my Kindergartener reads.
He's developed a decent vocabulary and is learning how to figure out strange words.
Sometimes, I forget how much he can read.

The other day, we made a trip to the bathroom at church. In the stall, at his eye level, he saw the sign.
And he read it to me.

"Please don't flush the paper towels in the toilet."

What progress we've made.

The mojo-mom

Of all the changes that 2008 wrought, the biggest was the loss of the office that had been my base of operations for a decade.

But I vowed I would make the change work for the better for me. I could work out of my home, with all the little perks, and new foibles, that came with it.

The work-balance is much better. There are times throughout the course of a normal day, when nothing is really happening, which makes it a perfect time to multi-task and run something in the washing machine or dryer or dishwasher.

The boy is adjusting to this new situation. He has interrupted me on interviews and he has come to enjoy his own perk of convincing Mommy to let him visit his favorite website.

And then there are days like today. Presidents Day is a school holiday and the husband needed to make a trip to Fort Pierce for a morning meeting. I had promised to watch the boy in the morning, but of course, breaking news broke through and I needed to get to DeLand to 1 p.m. for an assignment.

So we planned a rendezvous for the child transfer. We weren't sure if it would work but we would try. I whipped up some lunch, while I got into court-appropriate attire.
He ate in the car and I dashed to the meeting place. Husband called, running late.
We reconfigured our rendezvous to a gas station just off the Interstate 95 exit that put me right on the straight road to DeLand.

Thank heavens they weren't monitoring the road for speeders.

I made it just in time to hear the sentence pronounced and to get the crucial interviews afterwards.

All in a day's work, I suppose.

Willpower and weakness

It's the belief embodied in the yin-yang symbol, the opposites changing and transforming from one form to another in a constant cycle.

But it's a little disconcerting to experience such shifts from one opposite to another in the span of a few hours.

This morning, the outdoor thermometer read a rare (for Florida at least) 40 degrees and the windows were sweating with condensation. But I am determined to make my 5K goal, so I bundled up, adding layers, wrapping my head in a scarf and putting on the gloves. And I ran.

My running has improved, incrementally. And my layers kept me warm, for the most part, though I still felt some numbness in my fingers.

That is dedication.

But just a few hours later, I sat in a morning meeting and stared at the box of donuts. I had eaten and I know I really didn't need the extra calories, but if I can claim any weakness, it is definitely weakness for my favorite foods.

And I gave in.

I'd like to sit around and justify one for the other, that I can enjoy a donut since I'm running so much. But the reality is that I'm just human and it can be so hard to stick to the program all day long. Especially when the sugar beckons as a stress reliever.

Going the distance

I had been curious about how far I go during my morning route, so I did what anyone does these days.

I Googled it.

More preciously, I turned to Google Earth, which, among the nifty tools available, can measure the distance on paths that you draw on the map.

According to the website, I have been running 4K for the past week.

The map resolution is tricky to figure out. I use landmarks to gauge my progress, but those are more difficult to see from the satellite.
I did notice that some of the utility poles created a shadow that was visible, so I think the 4K measurement is right.

I counted that I need to run past another 6 poles to add .5 K to the end of the route, so that I do the full 5K in one round trip.

That becomes the goal for tomorrow.
Tonight, it's cross-training - either Tai Chi or yoga.

Apologies to my readers

One of you mentioned the difficulty in loading the blog.
I figured out that some HTML from one of these joiner sites was causing some kind of endless loop.

So I took it out, at risk of losing membership to a group that doesn't offer any significant benefits.

To whomever is left amongst my readers, hopefully, the blog should load much easier.

Sorry.

Adjustment

From today's morning run, I can already gauge improvements.
I'm starting to build up my aerobic endurance.
I'm struggling less, and covering the distance better.
My muscles and joints are aching less.
And I ran further than I had during my last two runs.

Now if I could actually get to the point when I could run a 5K.

I knew that running a 5K in a month would be ambitious. It's still not entirely imposssible. But I don't want to kill myself in the process.

I think I'd be satisfied if I could manage about 2/3rds of the race at a running pace. Perhaps that is a more reasonable goal.

Still, I'm out running and enjoying the new challenge. I've always needed goals like this and I suppose I'm not happy unless I feel like I'm accomplishing something.
And managing most of a 5K from a non-runner, with a history of flat feet and weak ankles, would be a decent accomplishment.

A reason to blog

I know I've neglected this blog.

Perhaps it was my newfound fascination with Facebook, or my new lifestyle as a mobile journalist. Perhaps it was that I was trying to keep my New Year's resolutions to get caught up on house projects.

I think, too, that I was getting bored. I could blog, but I missed key blogging opportunities.

Now, I have a new goal that brings me back to this site: I am running a 5K.

Years ago, I told a friend that I didn't understand running. I like my Tai Chi because I get the workout, plus all the other benies of strong mind, better health and martial arts moves. Running seemed like it was going nowhere.

I got motivated seeing the ad at church for a 5k fundraiser. How hard could it be? I could make it, right? It might be a nice accomplishment.

So here I am counting down 3 weeks to my first race.

I'm insane but the first week went well. Yes, I was sore and no, I didn't make my first targeted running interval.
But I made the distance and I made the targeted timeframe. An old hip injury bothered me the first morning after, and now my hamstring seems a little loose, but truly, I think I did well.

My goal is to finish and to run as much of the 5K as I can. If I don't make the whole 5K, no worries. I can always walk it and there is no shame in that.

And now I begin week 2.