Running for My Life

National pizza day, celebrate fire ant day, history of this and history of that month....eh. They all kinda blur together into a bunch of noise in this woman's head. But.....

Global Running Day. Now that's a day in which I can get onboard! Actually not so much the designated first Wednesday of June to celebrate the sport of running but my "on-again-off-again" love affair with the mere act of running.

I remember as a child loving to run. My parents and grandparents continually admonished me to slow down lest I break something important inside the house. I tended to be more like the proverbial bull in the china shop than the sweet, frilly dressed girl my mother tried to make me.

"Running is meant for outside," my mom would call after me as the young whirlwind that could never seem to sit still for more than a fraction of a minute would blow by her.

Barefoot summers were spent on asphalt hot enough to peel the bottom layers of even the toughest feet as I would wile the days away running back and forth between our house and my grandparents' home, conveniently four doors down the street.

Mom make me mad? Off in a fury to Grandmother Bull's I'd go, pebbles flying in my wake.

Bored and unimpressed with my mom's weekly grocery haul? Quicker than prey being followed on the hunt, I'd blaze down the street to be spoiled with ice cream, candy or a cheeseburger that somehow within minutes only my grandmother could produce out of thin air.

Sweet, sweet childhood days spent barefoot and running.

As time went on and the somewhat wayward idols of teenaged years began to creep in, the only things that seemed to move my lazy 16 year old butt were boys, beer and the beach.

Hours were spent in the company of lifelong girlfriends dreaming about what we would do once high school was in the rear view mirror and the colossal world of opportunities that stretched far from the little peninsula and even tinier hometown of ours were left in the dust as we journeyed westward when college began calling.

But before all of that would happen, a few friends and I deep into our final years of schooling decided that our college resumes needed some sprucing up. Yearbook committe, Model General Assembly, prom committee, etc didn't seem to sound like the impressive stuff upon which colleges decided your admissions fate especially when we were convinced that city kids had a definite leg up on us little country folk on the oft forgotten Eastern Shore of Virginia. Check out half the maps, you'll see why.

So began my running pursuits with purpose. I suppose you could call it purpose. Most days I hated it. The heat, the energy it required especially after a weekend of prowling around--all of that just seemed to make me question the rationale behind lettering in extracurricular high school misery just to look somewhat well-rounded to the higher academic realm.

I remember one particular district meet where a bee stung me on the butt right before the start. Which reminds me of what I probably hated the most about high school cross country---the uniforms. Hideous orange and blue (orange wasn't even one of our school colors) panties with elasticized legs that threatened to cut off all circulation from the butt down. Kinda reminded me of those jiffy pants from the 1960s that I remember my mom putting over my baby brother's cloth diaper to keep the pee from soaking everything around him.

In all honesty, I suspect what kept me mostly on the team were the early dismissals out of class to go to meets.

Regardless of the cockeyed reasons of my youth, while I didn't know it then, the seeds of running were being planted.

And for a couple of years, run we did.

And then onward to college we went.

And those other habits besides running that I had started to groom in high school? I got really proficient at them at the collegiate level.

No cross country running for me. I ran to bars, ran home in the way too early morning hours, ran to class way too many minutes late, and eventually I ran away from any of my good senses as well as all of my studies.

I gained not just the proverbial freshman 10 but overachieved in that area by packing on 20 pounds compliments of round the clock access to pizza and well, you guessed it, beer.

Before the midway point of my sophomore year, I had flunked out.

But somehow in the midst of dysfunctional living, I was able to run away to my college roommate's house for fall break to avoid being within 250 miles of my tuition gifters who surely would sentence me to living back home to figure things out. Simultaneously, I was able to also convince my college dean in a brillaint performance of depserate tears that I was a changed woman now ready to study. And by only one extra semester, I somehow managed to graduate with a degree in Psychology and Criminal Justice. I will still stand by my defense that the school switched between quarter hours and semesters in the midst of my college career which may or may not have played into my struggle to graduate on time. Even if that mere detail hadn't tripped up any of my peers in the process.

The second half of my degree pursuit was spent mostly trying to dig out of the hole I now found myself. My mother liked to say I had cut my own nose off to spite myself in my newfound, unbridled freedom away from home. I also recall one of her wise quips that had something to do with my now needing to lie in the bed that I had somehow made a mess of. My school teacher mom could be really annoying like that.

So after finishing up my graduation requrements with a nearly stellar second half GPA that still wasn't enough to purge all evidence of the first half, but nevertheless left me finally in good standing for my degree, with diploma in hand, I boomeranged back into my parents' nest for a few months before desperately finding a way back out of the sticks again. I eventually wound up cutting my teeth in criminal justice and psychology in the concrete jungle of DC before--fast-forward--getting married and having kids. Phew! Didn't think any of that would happen even in my most sober dreams back in the fall of 1983.

Living what I believed to be a pretty normal adult life, juggling the demands of corporate moves and trying to remain a social being all the while of raising kids and eventually caring for those who once lost their minds trying to raise me, (did I mention a cancer diagnosis in there too?) I now look back and realize that my life may have felt somewhat normal when held up to the measuring stick of society, but those decades were far from healthy and life affirming. But you don't know what you don't know, right?

Fast forward to the year 2016. The clock had just struck midnight on January 1st. I found myself an eighteen year cancer survivor and a somewhat empty nest mom with the youngest child thriving in college and the oldest trying to find her way through the Big Apple and a brand new career. And as my daddy would say, at that moment of reckoning, my chickens had finally come home to roost.

I had become a real slug. And a pretty unhealthy one, too.

Earlier that week, I had watched The Bucket List with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman and my search for purpose and meaning, particularly after cancer, began to niggle at me. If you haven't seen the movie, it's about two men who are strangers and end up in the same hospital room, each realizing that they need to come to terms with two things: who they are and what they have done with their lives. This leads to a list where they both decide what they still want to accomplish before they die. They bust out of the hospital, albeit against medical advice, and begin the pursuit of living.

I thought to myself, I have lived, haven't I?

I had raised two children to college and beyond and had traveled to a few really cool places although my real travels wouldn't begin until the following year when our son decided to study abroad in Spain for his junior year. I had friends and had chaired committees and a ton of volunteer opportunities and dinner groups and church......I HAD lived......hadn't I?

I was 52 years old and seriously pondering the question I already thought was obviously an affirmative.....but had I really lived?

Was I living a life that honored God with the state of my body or was I just justifying some really stupid and negative habits that society has normalized over the years?

Pouring out the half-empty bottle of champagne I was sipping solo in the dark (see I told you I had some pretty questionable habits) in my childhood kitchen sink while both my aging mother and my oblivious hubby were sound asleep, I decided it was time to switch things up.

Don't ask me why but the first thing that came to mind was, I'm gonna be a runner. Again.

Not long after the wheels began turning on that idea, adventures like triathlons and half marathons started to overtake the thoughts of initial 5 and 10ks. I've always known I'm a zero to 100 kinda girl but the thoughts of running pursuits I had never even heard of or considered before that very day, I have no clue exactly what prompted that leap down the endurance rabbit hole.

And so the journey of small steps began. Again.

One mile slowly but steadily grew into another and another until a girlfriend and I found ourselves at the start line of our very first half marathon. After crossing the 13.1 finish line, my girlfriend decided that she liked her knees way too much to do another but by then, the endurance world started to become my oyster. Who knew there were so many different ways to run. Small local races, large city ones, races over bridges, across country borders, 5 milers, two day 10 milers, triple state halfs, the NYC marathon and then....the Ironman and triathlon world caught my eye.

Dabbling in open water swim during my first Olympic distance triathlon in 2017 in the oh so clean Potomac River found me fighting hard against SIPE (stress induced pulmonary edema) and barely able to even doggy paddle my way through less than a mile leg of that race. But once out of the water nearly dead last and in the saddle of my new carbon road bike, the wind in my helmet and my age in black marker on my calf, passing both males and females half my age, something inside started to churn as I dismounted the bike and began running the final leg of that race.

Fast forward to 2019 and that floundering start to the triathlon world had morphed into a beautiful sunrise half iron swim that would leave me wondering how I could do something just halfway. My daddy also said if you're going to do something, don't do it halfway. Hence the impulsive act of registering amidst the amnesia of the pain of a 70.3 mile race for a full ironman the very next year. Ultimately, Covid would delay my 140.6 mile insanity until 2021.

I can't tell you that it felt good swimming 2.4 miles with jellyfish stinging my face and hands non-stop for over 90 minutes or biking 112 miles feeling pretty nauseous from the stings and unable to take in any nutrition, followed by a full marathon distance run completely unfueled with nothing but sips of water late into evening . But I can tell you that crossing that finish line after 15 hours 47 minutes and 39 seconds was only possible because years before I had decided to hang up the not so great habits and start some new ones by taking that first step and lacing up a pair of flashy new running shoes. And running. Again.

All this to simply say: it's never too late. You're never too old, too overweight, too shy, too busy, too "anything" to begin to improve your health; to turn around bad habits that wrongly identify you; to grab life and your bucket list---and run with it. Again.