A really long run...

I am a runner. I am not a runner that has always been so, though. In fact,  the readers who knew me in high school and college might have thought I would grow up to many various things, but I doubt an athlete would be in the top 10. I am like the 70 year old swimmer who takes off her bathing cap in the pool for the Geritol commercial from several years back and talks about how she started swimming at 50 (but taking Geritol makes her feel 18, or something like that).  I didn't start running until I was in my late 20s, and I didn't get good until the year I turned 30. I can say get good because I truly did excel at running in a way that stunned me (and everyone that knew me). The problem was is that I peaked quickly and then just as fast, a year or so later, returned to my slowish ways.

You would never know that I was good at running except that I find ways to remind just about everyone I meet (especially those that look at my muffin belly or my wider backside and indicate some doubt in believing that I used to be very fast) that I qualified for the Boston Marathon the first time I ran a marathon (which was the Marine Corps Marathon in 1999). I had some 8K and 10K times here in Richmond (the beauties of google, they will be preserved forever!) where I ran sub 8 minute  miles (for 5 or 6 miles) (in a row). I do brag about it when given the opportunity (and sometimes, I create my own opportunity). Why? 

Because me being a fast runner, an athlete, a marathoner... these are all things that I never imagined I could actually be. I exceeded my expectations and my beliefs, my dreams. People compare training for a marathon like taking a bar exam, you put in the time and you will pass. I agree to a point, having done both. My second marathon was almost 40 minutes slower than my first one (my first one was 3:40:52 in case you cared) and the second one was like the bar to me --- long, painful, slow... to the point that when I was done with it, even though I finished, I wasn't proud. I was just done.

But my first marathon, and several shorter races that I have completed over the years... those were times where I overshot my wildest dreams. And that is such an incredible feeling.

So anyway, my point in this posting, is that I feel like I can still call myself a runner now, even though I don't dare try a race again because I don't want to disappoint myself. But I get out there and put in the miles. Several days a week, every week. I stopped running (exercising at all actually, never even lifted a jug of milk) when I found out I was pregnant with Sadie. And I didn't start running again until Easter weekend when she was a year and a month old. It took me her whole first year to feel like I was ready to do something for me again, and not something that would immediately give some tangible benefit to her. But I have run ever since, sometimes with her in the jog stroller but increasingly, by myself.

And I truly do love it. Every day I get in a run... I am a better person. A better mother, a better lawyer, more patient, just happier.The days that I don't get a run in (or any exercise) are days where I feel like I am trapped in a shell of a body. I get moody, I get nasty, I just get irritated. I just need 45 minutes. Maybe an hour.

Tonight it occurred to me that I feel like I have been running a marathon, but it is far more like my second race than my first one. Not a good feeling. These changes... anticipated as early as last Christmas so basically 9 months in the making... have been like one long unforgiving tedious impossible run. A really long one.  The job change, the nanny change, this crappy economy that never seems to be on the upswing longer than a week or more. I feel like I have just kept my head down and trudged through the miles, over and over again, for a really long time.

Now our race is over. The economy might not be back, but I am in my new job, and I am really starting to enjoy it. While I know that Sadie (and all of us) misses our old nanny, she has adjusted amazingly well to our new hire, who also seems just great. The time of great flux is finally over. I can stop running. I should feel relieved. I should feel proud.

Instead, I want chocolate. I want s'mores actually, and a big glass of red wine. I want College Deli cheese fries, and a pitcher of beer to sit out on their patio with. I went through every cabinet in our kitchen, to no avail (my healthy eating kick of the last year resulted in the ban of processed food). I found a gallon size container of goldfish (Sadie's?) which didn't hit the spot. I looked at the bottles of wine in our cellar and decided that they were too expensive to open just for myself. Then I remembered that the cleaning lady was coming tomorrow and I have a chair in our bedroom that I tend to lay clean clothes in for a week, and tonight is the night I need to take the 30 minutes to put them away. I felt silly for thinking of drinking alone. And I figured in my mood I would spill it upstairs. So I ate some goldfish, and some frosted mini wheats. And now I am up here (staring at said chair piled high with clothes)blogging.

I guess there are good runs, and not so good runs. Runs where you qualify for Boston and surprise yourself. And other runs where you feel like you were in a sea of sand without an ocean breeze and you just never feel strong, at all. Runs that feel like they will never end, and when they do, you say you won't ever run again. This is one of those runs. We all survived. We made good decisions, we thrived actually. We didn't burn any bridges, and I truly hope I will keep my Troutman friends and our wonderful relationship with our former nanny (who is meant for greater things and will achieve them, as will our current nanny after she is with us 2 years, I have no doubt). Everything went as good as we could have hoped.

But I am just so darn tired.