One Shoe On

So I starting thinking that I would just run and blog about the journey. I thought it corny but running it can very often be a metaphor for life. There are great runs, good runs, and bad runs. I try (and I do mean TRY) not to think of them as bad runs. I try to think of them more as personal teaching moments with accelerated heart rate. Not so much the last few runs.

I marvel at the running motivational statement I read do often: "A run doesn't start until you forget you are running." Really? Who are these people? I have on those great runs and don't mind the mileage and do love a good runner's buzz but I do not think i have ever forgotten I was running. EVER. Or the twaddle about working on complex problem in their head as they run. I have had problems and a run has relieved stress about whatever it was I was facing or perhaps cleared my head enough to work on it later but I don't seem to be able to think about any one topic for more that a few seconds. I am doing it wrong. I must be. If I did it right wouldn't it be easier? Perhaps I am just too concerned about drawing the next breath when running up a steep hill or not tripping over my own feet (or in this case other debris in my path) and falling down. My focus was on my path...and finding a place I could jump, tuck and roll if a car got too close.

It's really a battle some days. Battling myself. Battling weather. Battling my existing stress. 

So it can be hard. Why keep doing it? If I don't feel like I am flying down a hill all the time why bother? If I am not running half marathon distance without a walk break, why keep trying?

It was 18 degrees and I do not do well sucking in the polar vortex when I run so I stalled until evening. Finally 50 degrees. Better. But I still didn't want to run. Its winter (or at least feels like it) and I just don't want to do it. Its hard to breathe, my nose runs, my lungs seize, it takes half a mile before my frozen blood actually gets to my fingertips....I can easily find thousands of reasons not to do it. But I got one shoe on my short, fat little foot and I was all in.

So I ran.

1.5 miles in I wanted to walk. I still believe that people are runners even if they do take walk breaks but I was not wanting a break I wanted to stop. Just a little farther. So I kept running. A passing thought flashed through my brain "you could short cut home..." No I kept running. I ran up a hill feeling lead legs, I dodged the rush hour frantic drivers trying to get home on my in-the-near-dark run and one blasted dog (I say dog but it looked more like a small horse). I kept running. Why? Why did I not just sneak back through the neighborhood and go home?

It would be so easy for me to quit. I would have actually felt good to stop and just walk ALL the way home....slowly. Don't get me wrong. I do not deserve any persistence award for running. But just like not wanting to run there are things that i just don't want any part of and I frequently want to just not deal with them anymore. Things I don't want to do. Things that are overwhelming. Stuff that is just difficult. Undesirable situations that must be confronted. Work. Looking for work. Single Motherhood. Money. 

I see this in my son. I know that he gets a peeved at me telling me the only time I say his name is when I am asking if he checked his blood sugar. (yeah, okay I saw it a lot). I see him get overwhelmed when he is sick and misses school and faces the sheer magnitude of his make up work. Trying to find a spot on a finger to get blood from that doesn't have the callouses of a construction worker. Always having a glucose meter in his pocket or backpack. When his insulin pump site comes out in the night and he wakes up nauseated, high sugar and occasionally vomiting. I try to be very honest about what is difficult for me and careful not to sound like those horrible motivational posters so many put around the work place. I tell him when I don't want to get up for work. When I don't want to cook dinner. When I would rather have a painful dental procedure than pay bills. But I try to temper this with showing him that I try to persist in these small things. Maybe if I am lucky, I can show him making the effort to persist is worth it. 

If I get one shoe on, I am half way there.