Ten Miles, 20 Bands, and 1 Sore Old Body

That is me, on the far left in the Beef shirt, smiling. Its a fuzzy picture which is good, because it camouflages the pain behind that smile. Not one certain place on my body in pain, pretty much the whole body. It was a ten-mile course, spattered with rock-n-roll bands all along the way. Sound cool on paper. It was cool. Except I only got to listen to each band for a few seconds...because I was RUNNING! Duh.

Many of Austin races have bands. I remembered that after we got started. Its kind of a thing here in the "Live Music Capital of the World". We're not bragging...much.

But the Austin 10/20 promised 20 bands during the ten miles and I thought what a cool way to distract me from the ten miles my body will be trying to run. I wondered as I watched those bands how many of them hated to get up that morning to go play in the muggy weather over thousands of sweaty runners trotting by not even able to stop and bang their heads. None of them looked much like "morning" people.

It was a mass start but we were organized into zones according to our running abilities so we milled through the corrals until we reached the start and off we went. I was running with two of my Beef team members who ran my same pace. One was soley a runner so she was probably conditioned to run faster but mentioned this was just a "fun run" for her, aka social-run-I'm-not-trying-to-win. The other is training for the freaking Ironman next month and said after this 10 miles her training plan says she needs to run another 10. Oh yeah, and she rode 74 miles on her bike the day before. She's a machine.

Me? I'm the triathlete who gets her workouts in while her kids are in piano or after dark when everyone's homework is done if I'm lucky. There are weeks I haven't been able to squeeze in more than one hour for a workout. Usually on the weekends I make up for it and try the whole Weekend Warrior thing with long rides or runs, but many times only one day of the weekend I'm able to fit something in. Its frustrating to want to do more but just not have enough hours in the day to do it.

Get up early you say? Hmmm, so I work until 5 every day. I drive home in rush hour traffic arriving by 5:40pm on a good day, and usually am out the door again to the kids' church, piano, volleyball or cheer functions by 6 or 6:30. Home by 7:30 or later depending on the night. Kids get dinner and shower and the dogs need a petting or even a walk if they're lucky and now its 9pm. Kids go to bed (in theory) at 9:30 and 10pm. Now if my teenager ACTUALLY goes to bed at 10pm, which usually bleeds over to 10:15 or 10:20, I get to finally veg in front of the TV to catch up on my shows. I try to turn off the TV by 11pm so I can read before I go to sleep. I love to read but never have a quiet moment except for 11pm or later. Fall asleep reading by 11:30pm.

Do you see me getting up at 5am the next morning? Uh, no. I do get up at 6:30am to start the whole thing over again, so to get an early morning workout in means 5am, and 5am means Mommy gets no sleep, and that means DANGER. I need my 7 hours of sleep or it gets ugly.

I digress. Our plan on the 10 miler was to run at least the first 5k without stopping and reassess whether to run/walk it. In the past on the two half-marathons, I ran/walked one and ran the whole second one and my time on the second was only like 8 minutes better. But somehow run/walking seems wussy. My running is slow enough that some duck-walkers pass me so really to slow down more is embarrassing.

We got to the 5K mark and the other girls were like "I feel good, wanna keep going?" so of course I said "YUP" even though my legs were not so happy at that point. After a 5K! UGH. I should be leaping past that 5K sign with all the running I've done in the past year. My last few weeks have been short sub-4 mile runs and not fast at all. Basically I've been slacking, and it showed.

We ran more and I think we got to the 5 mile marker and I finally said I wanted to walk a minute. It was right on the hour mark, so we try to time it as a four minute run, 1 minute walk so the math is easy on our watches. Sometimes we talk too much and don't pay attention and either walk too long or run too long...but 4/1 is easiest to maintain.

The sun never came out but the clouds were gray and low and holding the heat and humidity down right on us. I was smelly and sweaty and it was only half-way over. Austin is not a flat town and so up and down we went. I slowed at every water stop to hydrate and my legs, knees, hips continued to bark. The other two were slightly ahead of me which was fine because I was in a "leave me and my pain alone" mood and hung back on purpose. They would slow on the walks to let me catch up and we did have some nice girl-talk. I barely noticed the bands to tell you the truth.

We came back around the 9 mile marker and there was our Beef team volunteers cheering and making noise and taking pictures...hence the smiley pic above. It did give me a boost to get running and I saw the band we saw first as we left the starting gate. Whoo-hoo we are almost to the end and its only be an hour and 45 mintues! Oops wait, we still have a mile to go. We veer off from the finish line to loop around some of the stores in the Domain and I'm really starting to ache. But there were big crowds and our Beef team members were screaming for us to keep going so I put my head down and ran.

I always find a surge of energy to sling-shot me into the finish line of my races...all the spectators lined up yelling always helps me out. There we went all three of us across the Finish at 2:06. I didn't feel like I had a great run but my time wasn't horrible. I was #508 out of 628 women in my age group (40-44). That's a huge age group and I definitely wasn't a shining star in it, but there were 120 women of my age who sucked worse (not you K, your time was the same as mine, they just listed you a second slower so you were under me- totally not fair since you waited for me half the run!). There were 6,000+ men and women who finished and I was one of them, so I'll take it.

My training can be better. It will be better. I have an Olympic triathlon coming up in a month and I don't want my run to ruin it. I will squeeze an hour even if I'm tired, and even if the girls are busy, so I have something to call my own. I've already signed up for my next 10K (only 6.2 miles) and there's no excuse not to do better with 2 weeks to get ready.

And onward to the next over-sized stupidly heavy medal, which validates me whether I had a good run or not, and which I love so much.

Impatience is Thy Enemy

I'm not the best at waiting. In fact, I'm pretty awful at it. I don't enjoy waiting in lines or sitting in waiting rooms past my appointment time. I make lists and enjoy nothing more than to cross off duties as I get them done. I get my list to be fully crossed off as soon as possible. If I make a list, its because I'm going to get the things on it done.

Watching others take their time makes me crazy. I realize there are folks who don't adhere to the same timeline I do, but when I am made to watch them lolly-gaggle along, I have to concentrate on not blowing steam out my ears. My kids are famous for this. I'm a multi-tasker so I can easily get three or four tasks done in one pass, like walking through the living room and throwing away a soda can, picking up dirty socks and grabbing the remote that belongs to the upstairs TV. Its all my kids can do to remember to turn off the TV when they leave the room. One button. Never mind hanging up their jacket and tossing their trash from snacktime. Too many steps gets them confused. One-track minds.

My hurry-up-and-go habits aren't necessarily good for me but in my job and my homelife they are necessary so everything gets done. Who else will do it? I've been divorced for almost 5 years and have grown pretty damn independent. Or controlling, whatever you want to call it. I do the work of 2 or more people depending on the day. When I was married it was this way anyway (hence the divorce) but now I really have to step up or the world will come to an end.

In my job, I constantly have to keep things flowing and organized because my assistant just doesn't have the attention to detail that I do. If I don't want to have to re-do it, I'll just do it myself in the first place. I file the insurance claims, I make the chart notes, I fill out repair and order forms. These are all jobs she could do, but if they are done wrong, delays and screw-ups result. I know, she will never learn if I don't let her try...uh, I've let her try, and then I just do it myself...correctly. IF I have cleaned out waste baskets at the end of the day, I'm pretty lucky I didn't have to do that myself.

At home I do my best to give chores and responsibilities to the children. Making their own beds and cleaning their rooms are a must. The dishes are hard to screw up, so unloading and loading are their jobs. Laundry? They can separate and fold but the washing cycle is mostly up to me. Don't want to have my whites turn pink or brown from one rogue sock. Only I check the pockets so I don't have a blow-out in the dryer of some note or candy left in a pocket. For that matter, I'm the only one who CARES about clean laundry apparently. Oh, correction. Lil Lady is very concerned about her clean jeans or shorts...at 7am before school, when there's no way in hell she's getting them clean if they aren't already in the dryer. Chillgirl is lucky to find matching socks so SHE definitely doesn't care.

My patience with housework and work-work is fair. I have never had the chance to lean on someone else in either place so I just do it.

In my life in general I'm a bit of a crab when something needs to be resolved and it isn't getting done in a timely fashion. Lately that has included family court cases of people in my life. Not necessarily ME, I'm not waiting for my day in court, but the frustration at watching others get put off and delayed for final decisions about major issues in their or their kids' lives is maddening. My sister has had to put her budget and relationship with her son in the court's hands and her lawyer's hands to make things right. They don't care about time. They have many other people waiting as well. We can't resolve this issue in the time allotted for today? Assign another court date in 6 weeks. Next!

My Sinatra is inching ever so slowly toward a resolution of the custody matters with his ex. She doesn't want him moving to my area and is fighting the unrestricted geographical limits in their divorce decree. A social worker is involved to ask all parties about the situation and what they want, mainly with whom the kids want to live. Court dates are set but the appointments for all these interviews are 1-3 weeks out EACH and those court dates will have to be pushed. What's available on the docket? 4 weeks away? 6 weeks? Now we are talking summertime and having interruption of summer plans and eventually school starting again.

Is it wrong to want to know if the man I love and his children will be here by August for school? We aren't moving in together, so it isn't due to me needing to move or pack or change anything logistically about my life. Its just me, wanting to see a bit into my future and know I will have my whole family (yes that means him and his) here to plan our days and weekends and activities and holidays.

It's an exciting thought but there's a mental brick wall standing in my way and all I can do is look up, but have no way of climbing it. I try to ignore it but sometimes I run straight into it and cry and scream (mentally) about the fact that things are out of my control and I am being forced to be patient. Against my will. Against my nature.

I pray. I write. I talk it out with Sinatra or my friends. Stating the obvious and my frustration about the lack of movement of other people because they have nothing invested in the advancement of the issue. If his ex wants the kids to stay close to her, she has no reason to let the courts quickly decide they can move. She's in no hurry to get her interviews or court dates done. He can't move them here with the case ongoing. So why end it?

All I can do is wait for the day I will know either way. I'm not great at it, but I have no choice other than walking away altogether. As I said, I have NO choice.