running – Frozen Grapes Are Not Dessert

Back to It

When we were on vacation, I packed my running shoes, as I have for many other vacations, and — for a change — I used them. Running in rural Minnesota is truly ideal. It was a surprise to me, but I’ve found that my favorite time of day to run is early morning. 6am or so. This might be because it’s summer, and I don’t particularly like the idea of running in the heat of the afternoon, and it might be because this is the time that’s available to me, so I love it out of necessity. But there’s something about the whole brand-new-day factor. “Fresh, with no mistakes in it.” I find that you meet fewer people, which I like, because I become a little proprietary about where I run, and the people you do meet are friendly in a non-intrusive, 6am, we’re all in this together sort of way. On a Saturday at 6am in rural Minnesota, you’ve pretty much got the roads to yourself, which is ideal in my opinion. John Muir said, “Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.” There’s just something about a dirt road that sings to the soul. Minnesota at 6am on a dirt road is a beautiful thing, for the eyes and for the soul.

Western South Dakota is also a gorgeously beautiful, mostly rural place to run. Unless, of course, you’re staying at a hotel with an attached water park in the business loop of Rapid City. I asked the front desk how to get out of the overflowing parking lot and into the neighborhood behind us. The answer was, You can’t, on foot. And while I could have gone back to our room, retrieved the car keys, driven to a neighborhood, or driven to somewhere beyond the neighborhood, I took the front desk’s advice to use the frontage road next to the hotel. Having just come from my nearly poetic Minnesota run, the frontage road of I-90 wasn’t quite as ideal. In Minnesota at 6am, the only sounds were birds, and roosters, and the dogs I woke up by running by (oops). I-90 isn’t crazy busy at 6am, but there’s still the sound of traffic. Really, I’m listening to music anyway, so I have no business complaining about ambient noise. But there is a definite difference. And the I-90 frontage road was fine. Paved. Safe. It’s sort of motivating to mark time by billboards. They seem close together when you’re driving by, but there are actually quite a few steps between them. There’s certainly no proprietary sense of owning the 6am morning, or owning the road, with interstate traffic speeding by beside you. But as you run by the stark black and white Who Is Jesus billboard, next to the Smoking Gun Indoor Range, you definitely have things to think about. And beyond both of those things, there’s a very pretty view of rolling green hills. You just have to work a little harder for it.

Returning to Colorado, pretty proud of myself for having kept up on running, even on vacation, I promptly got the kind of summer cold that makes you question every healthy thing you’re doing for your body, because obviously your body is a traitor who hates you, and why are you even attempting to make life better for that jerk? And so, for a week, when my alarm went off at 6am, I fought off the Nyquil haze only long enough to push aside the fluffy white pile of tissues beside me to hit snooze, and went back to bed. By Friday evening, I probably could have run but I opted for a phone call, sushi and a glass (and a half) of wine instead. Which I still think was a good choice. But Saturday is a new week, and 6am found me tying up my running shoes. “I probably won’t be gone long,” I told my husband. “It’s been a week, so I’m probably back to zero again.” But you know? I wasn’t. I was maybe an 8 out of 10, if you generously put where I was before the backstabbing summer cold as a 10. But beyond being a bit more expectorant-y, a little more out of breath, my body carried me through. Maybe it doesn’t hate me after all. Sorry I called you a traitor.

Back in the Groove

I’ve been back in the running groove for a few weeks now, and I have to say, it’s as I remember it. That is to say, it’s not very glamorous, I do a lot of red-faced deep breathing from about 4 minutes in, and I have to perpetually play mind games with myself to get through it. And, when I’m not giving myself a new 30-second goal, it’s gratifying, and feels good when I’m done to know I made it happen.

Some thoughts about running, from a perpetual newbie, for the perpetual newbie:

1) If you’re going to be getting up extra early in the morning to exercise, be assured that your running shoes and your sports bra are not going to be where they should be. Even if you know where you left your running shoes, just assume that in the night leprechauns came in and moved them to the other side of the house, on a different floor. Nothing destroys motivation faster than an unanticipated hunt for shoes or sports bra; so overnight, put them in a safe zone pile right next to the alarm.

2) If you’re like me, running requires music. I wish I could be one of those people that just communes with my thoughts and appreciates nature and/or the steady beat of my exercising heart, but I’m not. A good playlist can really make or break a run for me. One poorly-paced song can make it all feel like a slog through industrial strength Jell-O where a few minutes ago, it felt like it was going pretty well. Take the time to make a playlist, or ideally several playlists, of songs you love that put you on pace. If you look forward to your playlist, it makes all the difference.

3) Speaking of that playlist, start with some shorter tracks. It makes you feel like you’re moving through time faster. (Hey, look, I’m already into the third song. I’m a rock star!) And I’m not just saying to avoid American Pie. I’ve learned from experience that if you put a playlist on random shuffle and the first song is Britney’s Til the World Ends, followed by Taylor’s Blank Space, both about four minutes, that’s the longest 8 minutes ever (no offense to the pop-alicious beat that is Brit and Tay.) Heartbeat Song by Kelly Clarkson and Love Don’t Die by the Fray are 3-minute wonders. Put those longer songs in the middle when you’re, hopefully, in the groove.

4) Don’t be afraid not to run. Sounds counter-intuitive, doesn’t it? My plan is always to get outside to run. Since I spend so much time sitting in an office building, it’s nice to remember first thing each morning that there’s a whole wide world out there. And I like to think I’m helping my circadian rhythms and my Vitamin D levels, but at healthy, off-peak sun hours. But it’s been a wet spring and early summer and for those days when I need to stay in sight of the house, I just run giant laps of my “front yard” — i.e., the park and baseball field across the street. One day, after slogging through half an hour in my front yard course, I left wet footprints up our porch stairs. It wasn’t worth it. My back-up plan is a Tracy Anderson DVD, or sometimes just powering through a load of dishes. Instead of assuming one missed day will be the beginning of the end, have faith that practicality and forward momentum can be inclusive.

5) Finally, be impressed with yourself, even when your accomplishments may pale in comparison to the countless running bloggers you may follow on Instagram for motivation. Remember, they’re motivation and inspiration, but their 8 “easy miles” (because they’re on a rest day) does not mean that my 2.5 painful miles count any less toward my own goals. My goal is to keep running. I’m like the Dory of my suburban neighborhood. Just keep ~~swimming~~ running. Just keep ~~swimming~~ running. When I finished a morning run last week, I realized that, since it had rained the evening before, each step on the baseball infield was mine. They weren’t competitively paced. They were only as valid as the next ballgame and or the next rain shower. But they were there. Because I had been.

Just Run With It

I saw a post on Instagram today that said, Remember that the reason you’re doing this is to make your life better.

It’s a good reminder. Throughout the last six months or so that I’ve started taking this whole wellness thing a little more seriously, I’ve been often surprised at what I’ve accomplished, which makes me think that perhaps a big part of my wellness struggle is that I’ve been selling myself short. I just never considered that I could be, or would be, the type of person to do without. Hey, life’s hard. We need fresh baked Italian bread and filled, frosted cupcakes! Until I realized it’s not so much doing without, but making a choice. Choices are interconnected by nature, winding roads that put us on a path that’s familiar but not always comforting. Previously, I’ve never really given interconnected choices a chance to play out in a positive way, at least from a health perspective. I’m not about to tell anyone it’s the universal answer to give up gluten — I didn’t make it through very much of the anti-grain tome Grain Brain before I put it down and took a big step away from that vat of kool aid — but since ditching wheat, I feel better than I have in years. And for years I felt pretty awful a lot of the time, so again, it’s good to remember why I’m choosing to crunch cucumbers instead of pretzels. The fact that I’ve been able to do so is surprising to no one more than me.

And so, in the vein of not selling myself short, I’ve realized for quite some time that exercise is very much lacking in my life. We try to hike as a family once a week or so as the Sunday weather permits, but in my Monday through Friday life, hours can go by before I realize my jaw is tensed, my feet are asleep and I haven’t moved since I got to my desk. It’s beyond unhealthy; it’s destructive. I think sometimes I can hear my muscles atrophying. They’re miserable in their fate, and yet so weakly anemic that their pleas for movement can be easily shushed as one more email comes in.

Tonight, I went for a run. A short run. Let’s call it a jog. I’ve been a sporadic jogger for most of my life, starting with 7th and 8th grade cross-country. I was abhorrently awful and gave it up for tennis in high school, at which I was moderately inept — definitely a step up. In college, my roommate and I ran together separately. By that, I mean we had a very strict Even Stephen rule about having to match the other for time or distance, but we weren’t the two girls in bouncy ponytails and cute outfits regaling each other with stories of the previous night out while we ran. We were grimly determined and usually rewarded ourselves with no-bake cookies or sometimes Kailua and ice cream (delicious). We continued our Even Stephen philosophy after college, checking in once a week to report our progress, or lack thereof. There were times in my checkered running career that I would get to a place where I’d nearly look forward to a run. I ran a 10k at one point; I could run for more than an hour straight. Take that, 7th grade me. And then I’d take a break from running — to cross-train, I’d tell myself — and that would be that, until the next cycle.

Tonight, I chose my long neglected playlist from the Bolder Boulder 10k… I put it on shuffle, but the running gods were smiling. My old playlist greeted me like a friend. It started with Franz Ferdinand The Fallen. Good beat, set the pace. I quickly realized that I haven’t been running in a long time. A few minutes in and barely around the corner of my block came Cake’s remake of I Will Survive. I smiled a little, grimly, yes, but smiled, and pressed on. I found that short groove where you think, I could totally do this. This isn’t so bad. Maybe I’m in better shape than I thought. And as I realized I was lying to myself, Sing by My Chemical Romance — a heavy hitter for me in the motivation department rotated in. 16 minutes later, Misery by Maroon 5 began and I decided that it was only fitting to end my inaugural run with such an appropriate anthem. Not quite 20 minutes, and I figured it was better to walk a few hills to finish up than to embarrass myself in a public open space where real, actual runners would have to stop and assist me. I wouldn’t say that my run was somehow new and shiny. Or that I was new and shiny because of making the effort. But I remembered that my husband has told me, ‘You’re a happier person when you’re running consistently’. I always laughed and said, ‘That’s funny because I’m miserable while I’m doing it.’ But even small wins can feel empowering, and that’s what tonight’s run felt like. I get to define myself, after all, and out there on the Wildcat Trail (that’s literally the name of the trail, not some weird metaphor I’m going for), no one knows for sure that I’m not a runner just like them. (I mean, they may be concerned that I’m just getting over bronchitis or something, but suburban runners are generally too polite to do more than throw a closed-mouth smile and head nod your way as they pass).

I don’t know if tonight is the beginning of a cycle or if, interconnected with other more positive choices, it can become more. I do know that I’m capable of surprising myself. So who knows?