Today was a cut your tongue on the Swiss Army knife kind of day.
I was eating my granola with a knife b/c it was either eat with the knife or my fingers. Then I sliced my tongue on it and I thought, yep, this is a cut your tongue on the Swiss Army knife kind of day.
Not exactly what I was going for. Instead, I was striving for something more like those memes that tell you to be amazing, do more than you imagined and change the world.
I didn’t have a spoon because I was supposed to eat my lunch at work about 2 hours earlier. But I forgot it.
I was supposed to eat my lunch earlier so I could work out at noon. Which I couldn’t b/c I forgot my shoes.
I forgot my shoes because I had 6 kids at my house and at 11:30 2 of them hadn’t eaten. I threw pizza at those 2 and ran out the door at 11:40.
I didn’t make the noon class.
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I’m a runner. I wake up running and fall asleep running.
Last night I dreamed I was a secret agent hiding in Italy, running from the Polizia.
I wake up with an agenda and kick into gear the moment my feet hit the ground. Then I fall asleep wishing I had accomplished more.
So I had this day nailed from 7:30-1:00pm… Or so I thought.
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“Momma loves to sweat.” The boys repeated this mantra about 25 times today from the backseat.
Don’t get too close. you might smell it.
I like to sweat on a daily basis. Sue me.
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I trained for the 2016 Grandma’s Marathon for about 6 months, running 1-3 times a week. I spent the rest of my training days weightlifting or trying to keep up with my Y peeps..
And in April I learned to walk.
I hadn’t done walking as part of my training before. Really ever.
Walking felt like a waste of time. Like not worth it. It is what you do when you are shopping, mowing or heading to the bus stop. But it wasn’t exercise for me.
Until this year.
Saturday and Sunday mornings, I would head out for 30-45 minutes and I simply felt better. Not so achy. Not so stiff. And it helped me find time to be alone for a few precious minutes on the weekends.
And then during Grandma’s I found I had to walk. It was hot. Black flags came up around mile 16 for me. I decided to walk so that I could run again someday. And so I didn’t have to be carted off in an ambulance or visit an aid tent like hundreds of others did that day.
Good thing I had learned to walk. And to walk fast.
(Golly even writing about how hot it was that day I find my heart beating faster and my lungs trying to get deeper breaths in anxiety. It was brutal.)
Well about 10 days after Grandma’s my friend Carrie said – hey, want to do a trail marathon?
I thought she was nuts. I didn’t tell my parents or my friends for a while b/c I had sworn after the black flags that I would never put myself through this again. I mean what am I trying to prove? I’ll never be running for a medal or even placing in the top 5% of my age division…
But a TRAIL marathon intrigued me.
And Grandma’s was awful.
And I was in marathon shape.
So I did it.
“A morning in the woods.” “You were made for the woods.” This is what my friends who have run it described it to be.
They were right.
It was wonderful.
Possibly the highlight of my summer.
I was muddy for days (See the fingernails). My toes were not clean for at least a week.
I was not fast either race. But I was able to run 2 full marathons in 4 weeks. In the midst of that, I turned 40. Yay me.
And guess what: You have to walk in a trail marathon. For me, it was a lot of walking.
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So today my day was not all I imagined it would be.
I didn’t get my sweat on. That’s really all that happened and now blogging about it, it feels trivial. But that one snafu which led to another really had me tempted to blow up and get frustrated and lose it…which would be normal for me. Just get irritated and stay that way until a new day starts…
Instead I took the boys swimming. They jumped off rocks. I swam too. Boys found a huge frog. Then we hit a new-to-them playground en route home.
And while they played, I took a walk.