Life of this empty nester: Easter weekend edition

 

• Volunteering with the Audubon Society:  Highly recommend!  It’s outside (win) and birds tend to nest in the spring in beautiful locations (win!) and it’s not only fun but really useful, too. And there’s nothing I love more than learning something new about the world.

 

• Night running: I totally consider myself a morning person, but there’s something about running into the sunset, then finishing your cool down in the twilight of a twisting road through the woods. Creepy? Yes. Awesome? YES.

 

• My secret vice: When I have to work on weekends or holidays (ie. all the time) I treat myself to a VENTI vanilla latte and and a favorite audiobook on my 1+ hour commute. Today’s audiobook?  Harry Potter 5: The Incredibly Annoying Teen Years.

• Not pictured: the ten gazillion pictures of the cat I sent to Ky. I’m such a mom. “The cats miss you!” ---> “I miss the cats so much!!” 

[I’ve checked in with my students about this, and it appears I am not alone in communicating my parental emotions through the medium of the imagined emotional life of the cats. Evidence: my students can immediately access no less than 10 snapchat images of their dog/cat/long eared rabbit with shameless “Buster sends you kisses!” addendums from their parents, and they HAVE TAKEN SCREENSHOTS of them. True story.]

Winter running versus treadmill

Last winter I made a concerted effort to run every single run outside, rain or snow or ice. I did a month long running streak and spent plenty of icy evenings after work, headlamp strapped over my winter cap, reflective vest, mittens, slipping over the frozen snow. I dug it. It was something new, a challenge.

This winter? I feel so over it already. 

I ran on the treadmill for the first time in my life yesterday. Dragging Ky to the gym with me took about 80% of my energy and the 20% I had left was good for 6 really, REALLY boring miles. Ky's face popping up in the mirror behind me, trying to catch my eye to sign "can we leeeeeeave???" and me looking anywhere but at that place in the mirror, toughing out my whopping 7 miles per hour, realizing my running clothes have a kind of perma-smell that I never notice when I'm running outside, wishing I hadn't forgotten my bottle of water, wondering why the woman on the treadmill next to me looked so much more graceful than me.  Good times. 

I'm now reclining with my coffee wondering if today's run is better served by 2 foot snow drifts and frozen sidewalks or the boring, stinky, dry treadmill. 

I think I'm going for the snow and ice.

Running and depression

I started running in 2011 when I was working at a high-intensity, world renowned, much sought-after Institute with such atrocious working conditions that mystery illnesses and drinking problems (my own on both counts included) were practically part of the working culture. I used to get stomach cramps on the stairs on the way up to my workspace, and the particular smell of the hallways that I'd initially loved - an old-world museum storage room smell - started triggering my gag reflex. 

Every few months I'd go to my doctor asking for blood tests, sure that I had a thyroid problem. My skin was terminally dry, my hair was so thin I could feel my scalp with my fingers in even the thickest parts and my energy level was zilch. My blood tests were all normal though, and he'd always very kindly and gently suggest that maybe I was experiencing stress, and that a healthy way to find out would be to combine regular exercise with a wise and caring person to talk to, either professionally or casually. I would always tell him I had no time for (nor interest in) therapy and exercise, and I'd go about my exact same business again, only to return a few months later thinking that I might have a different metabolic disorder. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat.

Eventually my contract at the high intensity famous place came to an end, and by then I was in such bad shape physically and emotionally that I pretty much just embraced unemployment with absolute relief. Ky and I traveled to Europe for a few weeks and I absolutely reveled in having no cell service, no email emergencies, no stomach pains and nausea hanging like a pig-pen cloud around me. 

But then as so many other have discovered during times of unemployment, what starts out to be the best vacation of your life at some point turns into a sort of keening hopelessness as you lose even the unlikeable scaffold of schedule, and in my case my sense of myself as a useful human being. Yes, I was still a mother, a girlfriend, a daughter, a sister, a volunteer. But as someone who had always defined myself partly as a mother and partly as someone called to my particular profession, I felt like I'd lost half my identity. 

I drank too much and despaired quite a bit. A new kind of depression settled in as I realized that my much hated job and unemployment were two very unlikeable sides of the employment spectrum and I would very much like to be somewhere in the more agreeable center. Only I was too mired in depression to find the energy to get there. 

This is when I started running. Maybe it was the ghost of my former doctor's voice telling me that exercise would help me work out my issues in a healthy way. Maybe it was reading something about a happy person running. Maybe it was the desire to not have Ky see me sitting on the couch after school, still in my pj's, and instead to see a mother who was actively engaged in some seemingly useful activity. 

Whatever sparked it, I started running because I was depressed and I was desperate for some tangible accomplishment in my life. If I ran, I had done something with my day. If I ran 2 miles, I had tackled an obstacle that I thought was unachievable the week before. If I ran, I had something to talk to Ky about after school. "Oh, I went for a run and I saw this HUGE osprey catch a fish!"  I found some running message boards and joined them for a sense of community that I desperately needed. Often during my run was the only time I made eye contact with another adult in the course of my day. It gave me a purpose. 

I didn't enjoy running. I wasn't any good at it, and in the first couple of months I only enjoyed the feeling of being finished with a run for the day. But at some point, I think when my runs started taking a solid 45 minutes or so, something finally kicked in and I began looking forward to the hour I had to sort out problems, think of solutions, be somewhat honest with myself about where my life was going. Or to zone out and fantasize about what my life would look like if it were different, better. Sometimes I jammed in earphones and blasted music from a better time in my life. Sometimes I daydreamed. Sometimes I carefully brought out the real, painful issues in my life and examined them in bits and pieces, using the run-generated endorphins to smooth the rough edges. 

I stopped drinking as much, because it ruined the next day's run if I was dehydrated. I started gaining a tiny, small amount of confidence as I improved. I started signing up for 5K's and ultimately half marathons to gain some small amount of community. I never went to races with anyone, and I rarely spoke to anyone while I was at one, but just running in a crowd felt like company and community to me.

I made some huge decisions while running, and ultimately my life changed quite a bit. I stopped needing to run to get away from my desperation, and started needing to run as mind-maintenance. 

But something in the last year started going south again. Lately my runs have felt more like the forced march they used to feel like. I need them for emotional triage once again, and each one is an emotional roller coaster once again. I wish I didn't find myself back in this dark head space again. I wish I was joyfully running along the road each day out of happiness and an overabundance of energy, but I'm not. Not consistently. But I'm glad that at least this time I have a template for getting back to that good place in my head. I don't have to reinvent the wheel - I can use it as the tool it is, hard as that is to accomplish.

When I went running today I found myself taking an old running route, from the "dark times", from the times my head was in a bad place and 5 miles was the longest run I could imagine. Today even felt like that as I plodded along. Like 5 miles was a long, long distance and my head needed to be convinced to stick with it when it was telling my body to just stop, just walk, just lean on a tree and let myself fall apart. I did ultimately do that, in the park across the street from my house, against the tree I've run past several times a week for the last few years. 

But even as I did that, I was still grateful for the endorphin-softened fall and the knowledge that I can run it out again tomorrow, and the next day, until my heart and head catch back up with my body and my life can make it back to that good place again. 

Covered Bridges Half Marathon 2014! In!

For perhaps the first time in my adult life, I was on the ball enough to register for a beautiful race **several months** in advance!  

I read that the Covered Bridges Half Marathon in beautiful Woodstock, Vermont, was one of the most beautiful half marathons you could hope to run in New England, and looking at the pictures I totally believe that!

I also read that because of the small field they allow, registration for the race sold out in 14 minutes in 2013!  Knowing nothing more than 1) I love Vermont, and my favorite races have all happened in the beautiful Vermont countryside, and 2) I have a thing for covered bridges (Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood??), and 3) if it sold out that quickly, people in the know must be really in love with this run, I set my calendar alert to 20 minutes before registration opened for the 2014 race - which was December 9th, 2013. 

Not pictured: me, running...

I don't know how many minutes it was before it sold out this year, but I refreshed frenetically as the hour turned over and the registration page went live, typed as fast as I possibly could, shelled out the $75 and got a spot, all within maybe 5 minutes. I'm so happy to be running this race!!

My current favorite half marathon memory was the Green Mountain Marathon, which ran past some of the most gorgeous countryside, orchards, horse farms, beautiful views of Lake Champlain. It was "hilly" for my flat-lander legs, but I PRd there probably through sheer excitement to see what view I'd find around the next corner. 

(my favorite view: the woods behind someone's house FILLED with painted birdhouses)

For personal reasons I'm really excited to be part of the Vermont running community right now, even if just tangentially by showing up to all of their gorgeous races. 

...and a merry Christmas run!

Winter hasn't been a season of long runs for me. I have big plans - 15 miles on Sunday, or even just 11 miles on a Friday when I don't have much going on at work - but somehow, no matter how good the cold air feels to me, my body seems more inclined to slow speeds and long, gradual halt-grindings. I do more walking during winter runs than I ever do in any other season. 

In summer, except for on the hottest days, walking is part of a "failed run". It doesn't matter if I run 14 great, energetic miles; if I walk the final 0.5, it's a "failed run" and I feel diminished by it for the remainder of the day. Summer, spring and fall are times for beating my best speed or distance and coming home covered in sweat and salt-caked clothes. But winter seems to be the season of 6 mile runs. 3 mile runs. "just around the lake" runs. "At least I got out there" runs.

I put off my Christmas run until 330pm. This is dangerous for me, as by 330pm I've generally found other things to do with my day, or I've eaten something that a jarring cadence will make me regret, or I've negotiated myself into an early morning run the following day and rationalize that an afternoon run would verge on a dangerous two-a-day, and to avoid injury I'm actually WISE to stay at home at this point.. an hour before sunset at any rate... etc. It goes like that. 

However guilt over my consumption of 5 toaster waffles over the course of the day, covered with Chocolate flavored Whipped Jiff peanut butter, got me into my running clothes and out the door. It was 28 degrees and I managed to totally nail the running wardrobe choice. Even last winter - 2 years into my running career - I was overdressing. This year I finally wised up and realized that if I wasn't a bit uncomfortably cold when I walked out my front door I'd overheat by mile 3 and hate myself, and I wore running tights, warm ankle socks, compression undershirt, long sleeved t and a fleece vest. It was PERFECT. A quick win for me as I trotted down my street.

My biggest challenge lately, besides winter laziness, is my lack of anything good to listen to while I run. At some point I've gotten addicted to audio books, but in the course of becoming an aficionado (one f? really?) I've also become something of a narrator-snob. Finding a good story with an excellent narrator that is high energy and absorbing enough to carry me through a long run? Well, that's a sweet and rare thing. I have some old favorites, but they are all in danger of becoming memorized as I've relied upon them between new discoveries - which are few and far between. Today, for Christmas, I cued up the second half of Ready Player One - an old favorite that has an exciting late-half action sequence that lasts several hours, and a narrator that has gotten me through many a long run without noticing the miles slipping past. I've tried to forget the book as a treat for a day like today - make it brand new again. As I ran down my road I turned on the familiar story, and while it wasn't brand new, it was a nice backdrop to my other thoughts about my life and the day. 

I ran through the park across the street from my house. This was the first path I'd ever run on during my "couch 2 5 K" days. It is paved, not very traveled except by dog walkers in the off-season, it smells like pine, has gentle hills and beautiful woods and passes the world's most perfect swimming lake with a rope swing Ky has cannot resist swinging on - even when the lake is ice and any rope-swinger risks a polar bear plunge if they lose their grip on the rope. (So far, no calamities - in fact, Ky's high school senior picture was taken mid-swing on that very rope, apparently floating effortlessly over the red and orange tree-reflecting lake).  

As I ran, memories flowed in and right back out of my head. One of the joys of running is what people always urge during meditation: thoughts come, are noticed, and then keep going, leaving only a faint emotional impression and requiring nothing more. I breathe in winter air, icy in my nose, chilly in my throat, warm in my lungs where it circulates, filling me with oxygen, before flowing out in clouds into the air. It's refreshing. I feel like the inside air I've been breathing can finally be displaced by something healthier and fresher. I feel like I'm cleaning out the cobwebs in my lungs and in my mind. 

My shoulders drop. My mind relaxes. My neck releases its hold on the back of my scalp and I grow a few inches in height. My stride changes, my feet making more (and less) contact with the ground. My breathing deepens and slows, absorbing more oxygen with every breath, as if I'm diving underwater and letting each oxygen molecule diffuse before surfacing to take another breath. I become a nicer person. Smarter. Happier. More efficient. 

I go easier on myself. I forgive myself for all the small mistakes I made that day that I tend to beat myself up over. I remember why I love running. I remember why I spent $100 on running shoes that will last 6 months but dither over $70 boots that will last 3 years. 

I live in a town where people smile hugely and genuinely when they see you on the bike path in the off-season. In our tourist town, seeing other people enjoy themselves after September is a great thing because we know that everyone we see is local, compadres, fellow weatherers of storms, entitled to enjoy each pleasure that happens outside the summer season - our hidden treasure, the Fall, the odd Winter day when it's 50 and sunny, hehehe this is all ours! - and on Christmas it's doubly that. There are smiles, hellos, "happy holidays!!!" and "oh, it's beautiful out today!" and "looking good!!" (this last only from the old men, who can get away with saying this to a woman in spandex, in sunlight, in the holiday season, clutching their little old wife's hand, a celebration of "young folks" doing athletic things with a smile, in the off-season...).

Today's run was wonderful. Town bonding, the most gorgeous sunset I have ever beheld - over the icy cold bay water, as seen past the orange and gold salt marsh - a little red fox I initially mistook for someone's off-leash dog trotting ahead of me for so long that I felt it was trying to lead me somewhere. 

Without even trying, small bubbles of gratitude rose up in me.

I was thankful for my perfect running shoes and expensive, warm and cushioned socks. 

For the icy cold but clear air, the shingled houses on the beach front, the red fox and the two little kids being pulled by a furiously energetic Christmas puppy on a new leash. 

For the fact that nothing on my body hurt. I didn't have to go to the bathroom. I remembered to wear my head light and my reflective vest.  I had Swedish Fish in my pocket if I got hungry. I had two Wollaver's organic ales in my fridge when I got home.

For the teenage boy in a deer-stalker cap resignedly humoring his elderly grandparents who were wrapped to the ears in scarves, each clutching one of his arms as they surged excitedly into the cold wind toward the salt marsh and sunset. (I loved seeing that)

I used to think a runner's high was like an actual "high" -whatever I thought that was. (In truth, my only experience with drugs was in the hospital when I was in hour 24 of labor with little Ky and the nurse gave me a shot of Demerol to sleep, but instead I chose to stay awake through it and watch Frasier, enjoying the unexpected experience of being drugged, and finding it MUCH to my liking) But I always thought of being "high" as Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, or like someone whose brain is senselessly going a mile a minute. And what I feel while running is more of the Demerol feeling - finding something interesting and worthy of attention in each mundane moment. I'll take it.