Posts Tagged ‘running’

 

“Life’s like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”

Wednesday, August 4th, 2010

And since the last post I had no idea what I was going to get. I have since been a student on a crash course in duplicity. The great writer that I am (hah), I had to look it up when told that’s what we’re dealing with. It is a word I would prefer not to know and it is a course I would rather not be taking … but then I should have thought about that before dipping into the box of chocolates. Abstinence, like ignorance, can sometimes be bliss.

But just like everything in this wonderful life, there is a great flip side. I run. I run like Mr Gump. And nothing can stop me. And it’s made me remember the first time we took our baby to the paediatrician for his very first check-up. The first thing she did after checking the circumference of our brand new baby’s head was check my husband’s blood pressure. “Now is the time to get healthy,” she said. “You have a responsibility to look after your health now that you have a baby. You have to be sure you are there for him until he is old enough to go his way.”

I remember thinking what a great thing to say and how kind she was to look out for the family unit. We all need to remember those words when we become parents since that is what we need to live by when there is another human being at risk if we leave this earth too soon.

So watch this space for the launch of the Forrest Gump School of Fitness for flabby fathers and mothers. Just don’t expect any chocolates.

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Forking off

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

My mother asked me what my next move would be. She was referring to the next step in the process of taking myself and my child through a divorce after my husband’s decision to fight for our marriage was followed swiftly by amnesia.

“To go for a run,” I replied.

On the brink of something so huge, I can no longer think in terms of years, months or weeks … sometimes even a day ahead is a stretch … so I think as far as the next few hours, and the only steps I can think of are small … and usually involve running. It ties up quite nicely with my intention to run a full marathon before the age of forty, a milestone that is fast approaching and one that I intend to reach in clichéd fabulousness. It means I can take all these next steps in a positive strength-gaining manner and achieve something solid when everything around me is tumbling down.

Or is it?

There is something to be said about rights of passage, something that begs the question on the outset: Is this really necessary? As it is with climbing mountains, the view from the top always surpasses the obscured view at base camp and the feeling of getting to the other side shifts all previous protestations into cries of, “That was so worth it!” So why are some mountains so damn difficult to climb? Is it because of the baggage we’re dragging … or the people?

Adapt or die. Is that the thing it boils down to? It’s taken me five years to adapt to life back in South Africa; five years to find my way to the life path I was searching for during the money-spinning days of London’s investment world; five years to turn my world on its head and redefine my life and who I am. Adapting to save a marriage would be devolving … it would be like both adapting and dying simultaneously.

I embarked on a spiritual journey just over a year ago. It is not a conventional journey but one that has led me to make choices such as giving up alcohol, caffeine and certain foods. Peer pressure aside, it has been relatively easy because I have come out with a greater sense of clarity, a strong, healthy body and energy I so desperately need to summit the next peak, baggage in tow. The feeling that I have gained from this journey has made my decision relatively simple. Not easy – never easy – just simple. I have realised if someone can choose a house, a bedroom, the TV, a bag of crisps and a pint of beer ahead of a marriage, then not choosing those things to the detriment of the marriage should also be acceptable.

But then in divorce no one is right. I desperately wish it wasn’t over but I am doing what I am being pushed to do – I am forking off down the road less travelled where my pioneering skills will lead me to a place of no mountains for a while. Or perhaps I will just have to go climb a real one.

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Serendipity

Friday, February 12th, 2010

I always fought so hard to be equal to my husband. Yeah, yeah … define equal and all that. From my perspective equality came with an equivalent income and a career choice that ensured future success and status. I had power and I fought to keep it. What I didn’t know – and what whacked me in the face this morning somewhere between kilometre 5 and 6 – was that it was when I relinquished the power that came with equal earnings that I actually gained my power. I found that hiding behind an equal bank balance was what really stripped me of my power.

There is so much more power that comes with the knowledge of who you truly are rather than the person you want others to see you to be.

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It’s about being part of something rather than being in it to win

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

Every time I am doing well at something, I tend to sabotage my success … but that’s not really a bhalababy post, it’s a therapy session.

I run. I am a runner. And I don’t win. I don’t win because I don’t need to win. And I run because I can be happy with my result, regardless. As it is in life, sometimes it’s just about participating. And, besides, every race can be a personal ‘win’ because I do a great time, I get the t-shirt and the medal … and then there are those endorphins which are as good as those during childbirth but without the intense pain. Sometimes.

I ran the Cape Grape Run … a tough 21.1km off-road race with Klein Constantia wine tasting at the top of the 8km climb … last Sunday. I was fit, I was strong, I had sorted out all my issues with shin splints, I had had a bowl of complex carbs, a cup of regular tea (after eight months without caffeine), my vitamins … I’d done my prep and I was so ready to thrash my PB (personal best). I destroyed the uphill, joked with fellow runners, left Steve and Gav in the dust and belted downhill while chatting to a veteran of long distance. It was kilometer 12 and I hadn’t even broken a sweat. I was set to tear past at least another hundred runners before the finish … Chariots of Fire was being whistled by the trees.

The crack sounded like a gun shot as my foot bent at an unnatural angle on making contact with a pile of lose rocks … and I watched as runners I had passed kilometers back started streaming past me. I already knew I wasn’t going to win this thing and now I knew I wasn’t even going to do a PB … but I ran on (with what I know now to be somewhere between a grade 2 and grade 3 sprain – the worst I could have done) so I could just finish the race. I knocked a few minutes off last year’s time and, best of all, I crossed the line seconds before Steve and Gav … after which I couldn’t even stand on the injured foot.

All the while, my husband and child were running the 5km fun run, a race my husband was planning to push our son in the jogging pram in order to complete the circuit. Turns out, my husband pushed and our son ran … all 5km in 42 minutes!

I didn’t get much sympathy for my alleged self-sabotage but I proved I could finish anything I start as long as my heart is in it … that goes a long way in proving the stamina required to be a parent.

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Back to math

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

Having just had that experience of crossing over into the life of my parallel dweller, visiting friends in London and Paris, I have also experienced staying with two friends who have chosen to have two children. Although my trip was primarily to run the Paris 20km, a distance I am fast becoming a veteran in, I have recently been making tourette-like declarations of intent to run a full 42km marathon before I am 40.

I’m running out of time.

Watching my friends with their children and gauging the extra workload of adding that extra person to the household, I got to wondering if the decision to go from one child to two children is perhaps something like going from a half marathon to a full marathon: it doesn’t necessarily require you to up the pace … often you can plod along a little slower … but the stamina required is oh so much more.

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Egalitarian running

Saturday, May 23rd, 2009

I’ve just come out of the running season – for me it never extends into the raining winter months because running in gloves, a beanie and three layers of clothing just totally destroys any roadie cred … Capetonians are hardcore judgemental about these things.

When I found out I was pregnant, I was training for the Two Oceans half marathon … yes, a big yawn for everyone who has heard me harping on about that one before … so I was already four or five months pregnant when I stopped running and my biggest stress was how I was ever going to be able to take it up again after the birth. Giving birth in September helped a lot … not that we can plan these things, if any … because I expressed milk first thing in the morning and headed out for my run before hubby had to head off for work. But as the months went by, the best buy ever was the Jeep 3-wheeler which is light, comfy and even has a CD player attachment to calm down any hysterical baby on hair-raising off-road trails.

So I eventually got to take baby out in the pram and there is no denying how damn tough that was – the arms are seriously under-rated running appendages and not having the use of them when struggling to get fit again post-pregnancy was excruciating. It, therefore, wasn’t long before I had recruited the husband and the dog to join the child and me on these post-pregnancy training runs. The decision was who got to pull the dog and who got to push the pram … no surprises there then that the pram was swiftly handed off to the husband. I thought I got the last laugh but it didn’t take long to realise that pulling a very sniffy 50kg dog along a pet-infested Promenade was possibly the least clever of my manipulations.

Having said that though, it turned out sniffy provided good enough strength training to improve on my half marathon time. Out of desperation to race last season and not having anyone to look after my child, I eventually screamed into a pillow, loaded the Jeep into my car and managed a couple of very speedy short races … the Jeep provided me with a very efficient battering ram – I ran down several fellow racers and earned my child his very first silver and bronze medals.

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Competing or merely participating?

Saturday, September 27th, 2008

I’m writing an article for a competition and while writing it I get stuck on answering my own question: Why am I actually participating when there is a greater chance of me winning a half marathon?

In going through the process I can’t help but realize that perhaps as parents we are always competing … but perhaps we are competing purely to participate rather than competing to win. After all, I don’t enter half marathons to win but just to be part of the experience … to be granted access to a part of life that I would otherwise not be part of. But if I don’t think of the – even remote – possibilty of winning, I wouldn’t bother entering. You can’t be part of parenting unless you participate but you won’t ever win … it’s the kind of race where you can win a heat but never the whole race. I’m going to get a medal anyway because it’s not a race I intend quitting before the finish.

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Another excuse not to run

Friday, May 18th, 2007

Usually when sick or incapacitated, it is a relief to climb into a hot bubble bath and feel guilt-free about lack of exercise for a few days. But what if you don’t have the choice? I was training for the Two Oceans half marathon and had climbed to 40km per week off-road running. Granted, it had been getting difficult to run, but that was during the phase of suspected malaria, so I kept pushing myself.

When I discovered I was pregnant, I was even more determined to run the race. I was not going to be one of those women who fell pregnant, put their feet up and expected to be treated like an invalid. Or so I thought.

At 4 months pregnant and a few weeks still to go to race day, I began to feel as though my insides were falling out each time I took a downhill plod … and when those insides hold a delicate, and rapidly growing, bunch of cells, I had to call it quits.

Pregnancy is as common as the common cold and you are treated as though there is absolutely nothing wrong with you. But then you fail at your exercise routine and life and limb become so much more cumbersome. So which is it? Are you delicate and worthy of giving yourself a break or should you attempt to continue as if all is the same?

That little bean on the ultrasound photo seems so insignificant at first but your child impacts your entire life from the moment it is around one inch tall. I succumbed and climbed into many hot bubble baths, primarily to chant and work through the resentment I was feeling towards my unborn child.

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