Me. My shoes. My "food issues". And so much more.
I found them. I found them on Sunday. Five weeks after they went missing. FIVE WEEKS. They were in the bottom of drawer of my dresser. Not a drawer I open much, obviously. So during those five weeks, I haven't run at all. Not even once. Not even when I was in Orillia, where I love running because the trails are flat and purty.
I am considering going for a run this weekend. If I do, I'll let you know how it goes. (Or maybe I won't, who am I kidding?!?)
So, I lose things. A lot. Way more than the average person. And my co-workers think that it's pretty funny. For example, when I told this story, Tracey could hardly breathe for laughing at me so hard. Some background - in the five months I've been working at Quest, I've lost my purse twice - once for a week, and once Tracey found in the lunch room. I've lost my card pass twice. Once forever, once I found it in a coffee shop.
A couple of weeks ago, I went to my Monday fitness class. It's a tight squeeze - both the kids' jujitsu class and the fitness class are 6-7, so it's a race to get there on time, and I leave even earlier. This time I had to leave class early because (this is embarrassing) I had recently lost a book. A book that my manager bought for me, and was looking forward to reading. I knew I had been reading it at the pool, and thought maybe I'd left it there. So I left class early, and went to the reception desk to check. She didn't have it, but told me to check the lost and found. The lost and found is through one of the change rooms, so I made my way there. I dug through through the bins. No book.
I knew my friend S would be on the pool deck, watching her kids swim, and I had a few minutes, so I went and chatted with her for a bit. As I started to wrap the chat up, a feeling of foreboding swept over me. I had been casually gathering up my stuff, when I became aware that I didn't have my keys. I didn't have my purse with me because... (this is embarrassing) I left it at work that day, so I just had my coat, a water bottle, my MP3 player, and my keys with me. My search became a bit more serious, and then I had to admit to S that I couldn't find my keys.
So, now what? They were the only keys to my van, since (this is embarrassing) we lost the other set. Lucky me - I got to go back to the front desk - and say: Remember me? I think when I was looking for my lost book, I may have lost my keys here. Nope. No keys. So I went out to check the van, to see I might have left them there - I had been in a hurry when I ran into class. No keys. Back to the front desk, where the girl was telling her coworker about this poor woman who lost a book, and then lost her keys while looking for the book. Back to the pool deck. No keys. In the meantime, Dexter was finishing class, and would soon wonder where I was. I called Tony to go pick him, and he then picked me up. The van remained at the gym. For two days. Until finally, the cleaners found my keys, tucked into a locker by someone who found them when after I dropped them in the change room on the way to the lost and found. So the point of this story - is that I lose things.
Today, when I was getting ready to go for a run, I couldn't find my running clothes. I have lost them. How you can lose clothes in your own home, I have no idea. I know I have seen them. I have the running bra that I wore the last time I wore my the pants and shirt that are missing. But the pants and shirt - they are gone. After I dug out some other clothes to wear, not the right weight for the weather, so I had to improvise, I couldn't find my shoes. I did eventually find them, on my daughter's bed with a pile of clean laundry I had put there.
But I'm not a total loser - 5K today! I did walk a bit of all three of the last hills, which are back to back at the end of my run. And I really couldn't have run much farther. But 5K is good - I don't like not being able to run 5K.
I still don't know where my clothes are though.
I ran four times this week. I committed to four workouts, one of which had to be a run, so I did well this week. (I hit a fitness class as well, so I actually did more than I committed to - a rarity in all parts of my life these days). I have branched out since I first started running - probably because my life has branched out. I ran four different routes, in three different parts of town:
So I fell off the wagon. Not as hard as it may look from posting history - I fell harder off the blogging wagon than I did the running wagon. But I have fallen.
I still run. I do. But somehow, it's not the same. Remember how I started out as a "runner"", and then finally graduated to being a runner? Well, now it's like I'm the person formerly known as a runner. I started running on March 15, 2004. 2004! That means five years later, I'm still reaping the benefits of the journey I started. Reading over my old entries (you should try it - it's pretty amusing if I do say so myself), I can see the love I once had for it. But somehow, somewhere along the way, it's become much more of a chore.
I think it was gaining some of the weight back that made it harder. I stopped running for a bit, and spent the time eating cookies instead. (I never have gone back to real Coke, I've replaced it with the much healthier Diet Coke. Hey - it's caffeine free Diet Coke!) Then, when I started again, there was more of me to haul around, I couldn't run as far, and it just seemed - impossible - to get back to where I was. Plus, there was the hills. Hills just aren't as friendly as they used to be.
Actually, maybe that's not it. I know when it happened. It was training for the triathlon that did me in. I got really burnt out, and have never really recovered. The fact that the triathlon was almost three years ago is not relevant, right? Three years isn't long enough to recover from burnout, it takes much longer than that. Right?
Oh, no, it was actually before that. It was the plantar fasciitis. Sometime in the past (maybe in 2006? 2007?), I developed a problem with my heel. I think it was due to some poorly fitting shoes - curing me of buying shoes from people who know not of which they speak. It persists to this day - sometimes more, sometimes less. So when the spirit moves me, and I run more than a couple of times in a week - I can be sure that my heel will start hurting again.
Or maybe I'm just making excuses. And I should stop. Fat, burnt out, broken down... does it really matter? Running is good for me, and makes me happy. I should run more. I really should.
Close your eyes and imagine this. A runner, passing by you. There is bounce in her step, and her long legs reach out and attack the pavement. Her thighs power her forward, and as she passes you, you turn and see a nice firm butt that barely jiggles.
Sounds nice, doesn't it? It's kind of how I imagine people reacting to me as I run by them (well, on the very rare occasion that it is warm enough to wear shorts so you can actually see my legs). Well, it turns out the reality is quite different.
Close your eyes and imagine this. A runner passing you by. Strangely, her thighs are hardly moving at all. Instead, her legs kick back from her calves, as though she is trying to kick her own ass. Although she appears to be working hard, and her arms are pumping, she isn't covering much ground - almost like she is running in place. As she passes you, you turn and see that her butt is bouncing in time to her little mincing steps, and you marvel that someone who works so hard still has such a flabby butt.
Apparently, that is the reality. After my race on Sunday, Tony (who managed to drag himself there, in spite of getting forty five minutes of sleep the night before) was telling me about my running style, compared to someone who looks like a runner. He said that some runners look like their legs are in charge, and that I wasn't one of them. He suggested that I should take advantage of my long legs, and make my strides longer. What he was saying actually resonated with me, as I have been thinking that my stride was off - as a matter of fact, Gingah and I touched on that on Saturday night at Donna's.
So, when I was running yesterday (10.5K!!), I examined my stride. It was short. Most of the movement was from the knee down. There is no bounce, all the motion is forward. So, I tried changing my stride. I lengthened it. I stretched my legs out to meet the pavement. I let my quads do the work, instead of my calf muscles. I covered more ground! I felt strong! I felt fast! This was what I have been missing! It was really freakin' hard! I couldn't maintain it! I had to go back to my short choppy stride!
And it explained a lot. First of all, I really feel that I was getting to be as fast as I was going to - obviously I could improve, but getting to that 25/26 minute mark where the bulk of the runners are really seemed out of my poor non-athletic reach. I've also been having a tough time with my calves. They seem to cramp and tighten a lot, particularly for the first three or four kilometres of a run, and in a 5K run, they don't ever get feeling fluid. As soon as I lengthened my stride, and let my legs push me forward, instead of just keeping them under me, I felt the difference in speed. And it makes sense. Why wouldn't you use those large muscles, instead of making the poor little calf muscles do it all? I could feel my quads and glutes working, and my calf muscles were relieved. I guess I have finished sculpting my calves, and am now ready to move on and tighten and build those other muscles. I think it will be hard though - it took a lot more energy per stride, and even though each stride was taking me further, I felt much more tired. I think I will start building time using my new stride - maybe 5 minutes at a time at first. And maybe, just maybe, I can be the runner I thought I was.
Well, okay, not me, but another personal best. I ran in the Lunenburg 5K race today. It was cold (10 degrees!), it was foggy, and it was the hilliest race course I have done. This was the first race that I actually ran, not just finished. It was fun finding my place in the pack - usually people pass me as they settle in, this time, I'm happy to say, I passed probably 30 people getting to the right place.
After that, I pretty much settled in, and although people passed me, it was because they were faster, not because I slowed down too much. Many many people finished behind me. I was still at the back of the pack, but I think I've moved to the front of the back. My time, you ask? Another personal best: 28:26 minutes. Although I secretly hoped to come in under 28 minutes, it is more than a minute faster than my last race, and this course was much hillier and less familiar. So, I'm okay with that. And I did run pretty hard (for me, the non-athlete, anyway!).
So, five weeks of training = 1.5 minutes less. Well worth it, right?
