No more excuses

It happened when I looked at the photos from our recent trip and noticed the slightly chubby triceps and other extra weight. It is time to up my game and get back in the ring and whatever other cliche I can throw at this extra baggage. I still have 15 pounds to loose from my last pregnancy, and another 5 after that to get down where I want to be for running.

So today I found the hardest hill in Elk Grove to run and I went out and ran it. 8 times. In the 90 degree heat. It felt good to sweat, think of all those folks locked up in their Air Conditioned Cars wondering, "what is she doing?", and just pound out the calories.

I've also found that whenever I diet and exercise to loose weight I do need a team of others working alongside me in order for me to succeed. Therefore, I sent an email out to some co-workers challenging them this week to join me as I:
1) focus on eating lots of fruit and veggies and little else
2) give up all liquids except for water, milk, and black tea
3) exercise till I can't talk for at least 20 minutes a day (hence cardio)

Feel free to take up the challenge with me this week, you might loose a couple pounds. Then again if you have not reached your own "no more excuses" moment yet, then you are excused.

Sophy's Amazing Answer to the Question: "Why do I run?"

Why do I call myself a running mom?  Well, seems I’ve always been running, mostly away from things.  As a middle child in a very competitive set of six kids, I often felt left out or forgotten.  So I’d temporarily runaway.  OK, I hid away from everybody else and took off to daydream.  As a result, I developed a drive to be independent and different from everyone else in my family.

I hated the used bike my sister had to share with me, so one Christmas, I saved up all my money to buy my own bike.  It was way too little.  But I found out that I could buy a unicycle with what I had, so I did.  I learned to ride it and became a fixture in my inner city neighborhood as that “kid on a unicycle” running errands.

Being the third girl attending parochial school, I often had the misfortune of being “another one” from that family.  So when it came time to pick out a high school, I chose a local one that I could walk to and break away from the sigma of my older sisters.  Running again, up the hill to school, and down again every day.  I made it through four years without a single tardy slip.

The continuous competition at home drove me to distraction.  So during my high school years I ran away from it through school activities, volunteer work and Junior Achievement. I was running away from my life at home.

I tried to run as a sport on my own during high school, but with no instruction, no school team, and neighborhoods I didn’t even like to walk through around me, it didn’t last long.  I had injured myself chasing after a bus and pulled my groin muscle badly.  At the local junior college I decided to take up weight lifting as a way to rehab it.  The coach suggested I try cross-country, so I did.  At the time I didn’t know the women’s cross country team needed more members.  I just signed up and ran!

I learned how to pick a shoe.  I learned about form.  I learned to run a seven-minute-mile.  OK, I couldn’t run more than five miles, but I learned to run as a sport.  I loved it.  It didn’t last.  When the season was over, I did some paid runs.  But in the early 80’s it was all about the competition.  I wasn’t fast enough to be competitive.  Then again taking two or three busses to and from runs wasn’t easy.  Nor was running with my sweats in a pack very comfortable.  I never checked my gear out of fear it would disappear.  So I ran away from running too.

At age 21, I moved away from home.  Just a few blocks for my first apartment, but I was out!  I had a job and was independent.  Ten years later, I married my long-time boyfriend.  Ten years after that and in our third apartment, we finally had our son.  To give him a better life than what we could afford in the big city, we moved to Elk Grove.  The ultimate runaway!  I became a home-mom.  Shortly after moving here, I discovered an ad for an inaugural 4th of July run that celebrated the incorporation of my new hometown.  I signed up and was instantly reconnected with running.

I joined a running group and got introduced to relay running.  Got hooked and continued that for six years.  Next I got hooked on distance running.   Now I’ve got half a dozen half marathons completed and have my goal set on a full 26.2 mile marathon.  I assist with my son’s track team at his school and chase the kids around the field shouting encouragement.  I’ve running friends who inspire and motivate me.  I run for “me” time where I don’t have to answer to anyone or make any decisions except how far and where I am running.

And my 11-year-old son…he wants to run a half marathon with me before he turns 13.  I am a running mom.

The Running Mom's Dilemma - please contribute

The Running Mom’s Dilemma

Today while running with two other super mothers we started chatting about the relative highs and lows of mothering and running in our current land of the strong and free. Each one of us has to wrestle with how to balance all the roles we play with an inner sense of self value and worth. The Running Mom’s Dilemma is an essay, blog, that might become a book highlight how and why we fight for this time, for ourselves to run. How it then makes us better mothers and wives and daughters and perhaps also employees or even bosses. Now the three of us are just three mothers in our corner of America, in sunny Elk Grove, California, but we know that in truth the numbers of us are growing across America. According to the magazine every Running Mom loves to glance at right after a good night to the kids, and romance with the husband, and before the night lights go off, women now make up 51% of all those marathon running in races in 2011! We are out there in droves. Running together and processing together (if we have wind in our lungs to talk while running) and thus this book is an attempt to share that run with you all.

You will join our running group by just reading this blog/essay/book, but first you must get to know the players and what are our passions. What drives us to get up early and run? Now this should also be your own question for there are many mothers who never do such a crazy act. My mother never did (except for that aerobics class back in college) and neither did my dairy farming great grand mothers, or immigrant grand mother. Sarah, that’s me, is 34 and has been running since she was 4^th string on the high school basketball time and always felt like the wanna-be athlete on the team. Coming from a family that had struggled (perhaps due to that longing for dairy products) with obesity I often got competitive as a child but in my family that really meant who could eat the most slices of pizza for dinner. After my father died at age 49 of cancer (that could have been masked by his obesity) my passion for running was renewed at age 21. But running has ALWAYS been there for me as an outlet. As I run I can go to a zone that is much like holding a yoga pose, or stating the Nicene Creed in church, or saying a simple prayer. Now that I’ve mothered 3 children in 5 years I need running more than ever but am now firmly facing the Running Mom’s dilemma: when to find the time to run, where is my balance?

Sophy's bio...

Shannon's bio...

In this text, besides helpful running tips and resources we also want share with you some of our other passions and knowledge on how live a balanced life in this crazy culture that is post-modern America. Sophie knows how to shop simply, cook simply, and thus create amazingly chemical-free food on a tight budget. Shannon is the queen of staying fit with two young kids by hiking, creative cardio cleaning, giving, and using children for weight resistence. Sarah is a suburban homesteader whose chicken flock has now supplied her family and friends, raises organic meat and fruits and veggies on her ½ acre lot at the end of the cult-de-sac, and finds solace in Christian prayer and meditation that she hopes will also lead you to intimacy with God and your loved ones. In a way isn’t a running mother a bit of a revolutionary against this American couch potato culture? In our quest for wholesome living we have given up the couch for the trail, the soda pop for an occasional glass of red wine, and the stress for a feeling of contentment and joy. We hope our little book will inspire you to get out there and join the Mommy running party – you are about to join ours.Please contribute if you want to join the discussion.

Re engage Core

      I've been injured really ever since my marathon in December of 2010. That year, up until that race was really amazing for me and my running self. Improvement just sky rocketed and even though I ran my 5k, 10k, and one mile personal records on tired legs (from work outs the day before) I knocked old times out of the ball park. For instance, in college and really throughout my 20s I couldn't ever really run a mile faster than 9 minutes. In 2010, I ran 5 in a row at 8:00 and then finished that workout with a 7:32 mile (faster than high school). In my 20s and early 30s, I would often run 5ks in around 31 minutes, or at a 10:00/mile pace. In that magical year of 2010, I ran one at 29, 27 and then 25:25 (winning my age group at a local 5k) and 8:25/mile pace. Older half marathon times hovered around 2:30, in 2010, I hit 1:59. Older marathon time was 6:45, so I was planning on around a 4:15 when I towed the line of my amazing, heady, self-confidence inducing year.

 But as English majors and tragedians will tell you: "Pride comes before a fall."

       I fell hard but I must say it was still an accomplishment. At mile 20 of that fateful marathon, my left hip gave out. I could feel it slip and then my gait just wasn't right again. And when I say again, I mean from that day until today. That would be 16 months of my gait no longer being right and my left hip aching when I try to jog (any distance). Now within 9 of those 16 months I was pregnant. The other 8 months have been spent nursing and attaching to and caring for a third child. Therefore, I have not focused on finding out why my hip wasn't working right and getting it fixed. In fact, I sort if ignored the problem as best I could - especially during the first hour in which it occurred because, "by gum it, I have a marathon to finish!". I finished my marathon in 5:04 (limping painfully to the finish), which probably didn't help my hip's timeline for healing.

      So that magical year of 2010 I must let you go! The year where I ran 7:32 in the mile, 8:25 in the 5, 8:45 in the 10k, 9:07 in the half marathon, and 11:11 in the marathon - must be let go of and instead I must now rejoice in May 12th, 2012.

       For today I ran a one mile time trial in ...drum roll...10:16 (okay I know that is a serious let down)...but....I ran it pain FREE. My hip did not give out. I did not feel any hip pain as I've been working with a Sport Medicine Doctor and Physical Therapist to rebuild my piroformis strength as well as my core. I am labeling this year the year of rebuilding. My simple if not slightly intense goal is to run a half marathon in September pain free. That is it. No time goal. Just to get to the start without pain and end it without pain. In my mind tonight I just kept reminding myself to "engage hips, engage core" over and over. I have to rebuild my gait so that I recognize the early warning signs of my hips decline before I get to mile 20 and am injured for a year an a half.

     This matches another lesson God is teaching me in my own heart about not pushing myself to the brink emotionally or physically before slowing down and asking for help. The core must be rebuilt before new heights can be reached. So I'm learning what is my core and how to rebuild it. Sounds like a task worth all my efforts and all my rest.