Life Running Rampant
July 21, 2012So here’s my advice for balancing work, family, and training: let the dust build on your furniture and not on you, set the alarm, tell your kid you love him 12 times/day, sweat hard, be humble and kind and authentic, and find depth of meaning in at least 7 parts of your life.
Child, partner, work, sport, friends, self, food. In no particular order.
When a bee swarms, you tell your kid to stand still and it will go away. I decided to step back from blogging for a spell as a result of some unwanted, icky prying into my private life by way of Google, and hopefully the bees have moved elsewhere. To review: I am a running blogger who sometimes writes about the intersections between work, sport, and family. I’m not a gossip monger, mommy blogger, suburban soap opera. If you want tedious race reports and 800-meter splits, I’m your gal. If you want cheap titillation, read EL James.
I’ve also been flat out for the past month, working a full-time job, part-time job, writing the book, mothering, and logging 50+ miles/week, which has shot my blogging time, not to mention my diet and housekeeping. I eat burritos and live in a warren of dust bunnies (which reproduce just as quickly, by the way). And yet, contrary to what you’d think, life is pretty great. I’m determined to prove you can sit at a desk for 9 hours, foster your child’s development, write a book that has meaning to others, and PR in every distance you race. Congruent with what you’d think, my back is killing me.
I’m back in PT for my chronic lumbar pain, which shoots into my glutes, piriformis, and occasionally all the way into my calf. It got me a pimped out office chair at work, but it also gets me spasms and fistfulls of Advil. I have to think that running the bulk of my miles on a treadmill has a lot to do with it, especially because I roll from my bed into my shoes and onto the mill in 10 minutes every morning without opening my eyes, much less warming up my muscles.
My new PT works with the Celtics and is superb, albeit a weight-training despot. I’m used to passive PT that grinds the tension from my muscles with massage and didn’t realize there is any subjectivity to PT technique. My new therapy emphasizes weight training, downplays massage. I actually have to do more than just lie there. It blows, but it works. Damn it. Henry likes coming with me because he sees me grunt and can wear Shaq’s shoes while I do stuff with my adductors.
Against my PT’s warnings, I’m racing a mile tomorrow on my quest to PR at every distance in 2012. Because I last raced a mile three years ago when I wasn’t doing nearly the paces I do now, I’m pretty confident I won’t eff it up. I need to break a 6:26 to PR, and as long as I don’t snap my leg along the way, I know I can do it. The race starts at Porter Square in Cambridge and finishes in front of the Harvard Coop, my one and only chance to safely run down the middle of Mass Ave on a Sunday morning. I can’t wait.
I’ll try to post a race report afterward if you’re keen to know how I fared. Thanks for reading if you’re still visiting my blog, and thanks for your understanding as I wrap up my manuscript in the next couple months, which will soak up the bulk of my word drool. I’ll try to write as much as possible. Of all the things I don’t want this blog to be, it’s a forum for whining, which can be a challenge with my schedule (see paragraph 1). When I run with my training partner and start to make negative statements, he says I get 2 acts of whining per run. I say they’re observations. But I get the point. No whining.
Child, partner, work, sport, friends, self, food.
Let’s move on.
Love that you’re back – you’ve been missed! My life is similarily balanced (although at times it feels OUT of balance and there’s barley time to breathe!). I appreciate you sharing how you’re managing to tackle all that you do…sounds like you’re making things happen.
I’m looking forward to hearing how your PR in the 1 miles shakes out!
be well,
xo
Glad to see you’re still alive and kicking! As running moms, I think most of us understand that sometimes other things take priority. You’re spot on to put blogging last (or somewhere down the totem pole). There are lots of more important things than sharing your thoughts with the Internet (random people).
Love your 7s! Perfect! So much of life is wasted on unnecessary household chores.
I am not on twitter but here are my experiences with exercise in the 3rd trimester. I ran about 40 miles a week on the treadmill (lived abroad at that time in my life in an unsafe area) up to my 6th month, when I developed low back pain similar to what you describe in your post. At that point I switched to the elliptical and continued to 40 run miles a week on it, plus swimming a ton during the last month (started residency the following month so had the month free). I had a very easy delivery with 15 minutes of pushing, out of the hospital next day and running 5 days later (but peeing on myself while running for 2 weeks postpartum). I also lost all my pregnancy weight within 2 weeks after birth. I am positive that exercise not only kept me sane during pregnancy but was also instrumental in my quick post baby recovery. Good luck with the book. Excited for it! You’ve got an authentic writing style.
Thank you…love love love your first paragraph, especially. I’ll be checking back waiting to read how you crush that mile
I’m not on twitter either, but ran up until the day before I delivered last summer. It wasn’t fast and it wasn’t pretty (I would sometimes cringe when I saw my reflection in storefront windows), but I could still do it. At some point (maybe 20 weeks or so), I realized that taking a day off in between runs allowed my hips to not feel as if they were going to fall off. That and a super ugly support belt seemed to hold everything together.
I have enjoyed your writing for about a year an a half now. Screw any haters. You rock. Just reading your blog makes me want to get out there and do amazing things. Keep it up : )
[...] realize I alluded to swarming bees last week, but it was supposed to be a [...]