A stranger was with me the first time I attempted verizon conference call run after giving birth to two daughters. This was a large, “watch-it-wiggle, see-it-jiggle” inner-thigh-chafing stranger with poor footing due to sleep deprivation and running shoes that, oddly, weren’t wide enough anymore. A stranger who couldn’t breathe without falling back on lessons learned in childbirth classes four years earlier and tackled simple speed bumps in the road as if climbing Mount Everest. Needless to say, I was running with myself.
Seven years before, I had been a lean and mean, pre-motherhood running machine. My powerful legs had held a strong 8:30 mile. I could enjoy entire, easy-flowing conversations as I darted up and down even the steepest hills. My husband, a veteran marathoner, would even enjoy a run with me on occasion.
But now? Now, from a running-world perspective, I felt like a big blob of motherhood, an emotional, binge-eating, hormonally challenged mess looking for one small piece of the sanity I once knew - and I intended to find it on the streets of suburbia. If running kept me out of the wine rack, and if I didn’t die of a heart attack or fall, literally, on my face, I decided that being an embarrassing public spectacle might just be worth it.
Early one crisp autumn morning, I laced up my tight-fitting shoes, donned some new running pants in a notable size “Large,” checked my watch, and stepped outside.
After a quick glance to ensure that no neighborhood friends were poised to catch a glimpse of my humiliation, I headed uphill, immediately relying on Lamaze breathing to conquer the beast (in-in-out . . . in-in-out) until I claimed a flat stretch of road as my very own. Admittedly, this vanquished beast wasn’t really a hill . . . more like a slight incline to a cross street. Regaining my breath, I checked my watch, which showed unbelievably that I had spent almost a full minute to go a bit more than 10 feet. Without question, there was room for improvement.
Almost immediately, here was another hill, much bigger and much longer, a real hill. At this point, I auto donations a mental note to tell my husband that we were moving at once out of our very hilly neighborhood. Nearly panicking, I began Lamaze again before even reaching the climb.
Certain that I would have to (a) stop, (b) be struck down by the aforementioned heart attack, or (c) fall on the face, I decided that of these three possibilities, the heart attack would be the most respectable. A heart attack would simply say that I had been committed to running to the death; the fall on the face would say instead, “Are you kidding me? Who falls on the face while running at a 12-minute-mile pace?” This would have been an ideal time for a strong gust of fall wind to use my “Large” pants as a parachute to lift me back home, where obviously I belonged.
About to call it a run and return to my house while it was still in sight, I suddenly remembered from yesteryear that on hills, I should drop my arms, transferring the energy used to swing them to power my legs. The re-powering approach worked, but it didn’t stop my wheezing or the intense desire to vomit.
More help from yesteryear - I easily overcame this most unwelcome desire using skills first learned in college, renewed in early pregnancy, and subsequently summoned through multiple strains of stomach viruses plaguing my home since the children joined us. As anyone who has been through a childbirth preparation class - or even a spinning college dorm room - knows, it’s a simple mantra: “Mind over matter; find a focal point.”
Again, I caught my breath and checked my watch. The time was so disgraceful by now that I decided to stop checking, but suddenly I recognized some wondrous progress . . . my house was nothing but a speck on the horizon, and I was still vertical and conscious.
A monumental mile or so later, my focal point and sudden inspiration to speed up became the house of a close friend. I simply could not have a heart attack now, and not just because it would have embarrassed me . . . she’s a good enough friend to overlook that. No, I was more concerned that she has three extremely “active” children under five, and she really didn’t need any kind of daredevil activity out of me, a fellow parent who should know better, in front of her house. She was already busy that morning, calling a repairman to get the melted crayons out of the dryer while simultaneously pulling her youngest son from the chandelier. I committed to getting far enough down the street that my tragic demise would not be another problem for her to handle.
Passing her house, I made a turn, let out a wheeze of relief, and finally - finally - found a downhill stretch. Once again, a recognizable inner voice told me to slow down, cut my steps and get my breathing back, and then take advantage of a stride down the rest of the hill.
Excitedly, I suddenly realized that running was actually a lot like riding a bike; at least in practice, it does come back to you. Just as suddenly, the excitement evaporated as I found myself wishing fervently that the tires on my particular “bike” hadn’t gotten so large and heavy to pedal.
The wheezing, the desire to vomit, the odd thigh-rubbing and the tricky footing continued for another few blocks as I returned home. Now, I had a new motivation - to get back quickly for my husband’s sake. Judging by his tense smile and terse wishes for “good luck,” he had been anxious when I left, obviously having panicked visions of raising two daughters alone.
Just as I entered my driveway and prepared to declare victory at the end of my whopping 20-minute inaugural run as a mother, I looked up to see my daughters waving enthusiastically at me through a window. Pausing to embrace their barely audible cheers while reciprocating their joy with my own big smiles and waving arms, I realized that however painful and embarrassing my run had been from my own point of view, it had been priceless for them to see me doing this for myself. Talk about motivation!
In that moment, I acknowledged that the lean and mean runner in me was still alive, albeit barely, after all. My old “bike” certainly needs some work, but it isn’t returning to the shed anytime soon.
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