Hooray! You're looking at my blog! How'd you get here, are you a friend? Then, please, let me apologize in advance. I'm not a great writer. I'm not a great athlete. I'm probably really not great at anything aside from spelling. (SPELLING. That's a super-valuable skill nowadays, isn't it? I mean, who really uses spellcheck...) So if you're my friend, and you're looking at this blog, I apologize that you got roped in to reading this crap. Seriously. You should probably go watch "Biggest Loser," it's bound to be more entertaining, and besides, at least you know right at the beginning that people will actually be losing weight, and getting in shape, which is all somehow satisfying in a story-book kind of way: you know that the contestants will face obstacles, but most, if not all, of them will struggle through to lose massive amounts of weight. And they will be able to run a marathon by the end of the show. Sadly, unlike a season of "The Biggest Loser," I cannot make any kind of promise that I will lose weight, even if I do somehow get into marginally better shape than I'm in right now. And, come to think of it, I cannot promise I will actually finish the Spartan. So if you're looking for a surefire feel-good story, this probably isn't the blog for you.
If you don't know me, then I am really, really sorry you are here. Who coerced you into reading this?....oh, wait, maybe it's an office pool or something like that?....you're waiting to see the train wreck? I understand. You may quite possibly see a spectacular train wreck. On the other hand, I cannot promise you massive public shame, humiliation and failure. It's possible that I might indeed complete this journey; I may, in all honesty, lose a lot of weight AND finish the Spartan race. So if you are here, popcorn in hand, gleefully expecting epic failure, I'm sorry to say you may not get that.
If you are my family....good heavens, you have to live with me or else you have to see me at Christmas, isn't that enough? Surely you have better things to do. I'm related to mathematicians, doctors, PhD's, business owners...surely you ought to spend your precious time coming up with a formula for the Theory of Everything, or you've got murderous crimes to solve, or students to teach (even peripherally), or businesses to run....Please, you have more important matters to attend to. (Hey, yeah, I know I ended that sentence on a split infinitive. Deal with it. It's my blog, don't get all English-y up in my grill. I might just take my gift back this Christmas.)
Why the Spartan? I don't know, honestly. A couple of my church friends did it, and I was jealous and insecure, and I said, "I'll do it with you next year!" because I want them to like me and because I imagine that possibly there might be some kind of moral support forthcoming from that impulsive declaration. Also, I know I need a goal in order for me to bother getting up off the sofa and to stop eating barbecue potato chips. I need purpose. Definition. An outside force. Something, anything, to get me back into shape.
Because I was in shape a couple years ago. I was, in fact, training to run a half-marathon. I was really looking forward to this event. I was going to run with my dad, who is super-fit, and of course he's my dad so I really, really want his approval, and what better way than to run 13 miles with him? He really digs exercising. More than anyone else I know. Maybe more than Jilliene Michaels. (Supposedly she hates exercising. But I guess she's super-motivated to look a certain way, i.e., thin and gorgeous, so that's enough motivation for her to work out. Whatevs. My dad could kick her butt. Not that that's saying much, but, well, it kind of is. And my dad is REALLY OLD compared to Jilliene. So that makes it more impressive, right? )
Anyway, I was training for this half-marathon - really training, not sitting on my sofa theoretically thinking about maybe possibly going for a run; no, I really was running. Quite a bit. I would go for a short, 4-mile run most days. Then about every ten days or so, a longer run. My longest run? Sixteen miles. That's right. SIXTEEN. Count 'em. Yep, I ran sixteen miles once. (On a treadmill. Don't judge. My longest street run was ten miles.) It was right about this time that I took a week off for the holidays, and that week turned into two weeks, and then I realized this was a bad trend, so I decided to go for a short, four-mile run one day. And that's when it happened.
Right down the road from me - where the road takes this perilous 90-degree turn - my knee started to hurt.
No big deal, I thought. I'll push through the pain.
Ha. Ha. Ha. In about 30 feet I was limping like a horse that is about to get "put down" with a shotgun. About 10 feet beyond that, I about fell over from the pain. However, figuring that getting run over with an actual moving vehicle would be slightly worse than a throbbing knee, I managed to stand up and careen over to the side of the road. For a few minutes, I considered, then rejected, the possibility of calling a taxi. Or maybe an ambulance.
Ultimately I rejected both of these ideas, and managed to limp / drag my foot pathetically behind me like a zombie, home.
Then I spent the next five years pouting. Because, you see, I liked running. It was fun. Nothing else was fun. I didn't have a reason to go work out. Oh, sure, I tried to "keep up my physical fitness" by going to the gym, but that made me want to stab my eyes out. What was the point? Why sweat on a machine, staring into outer space / at other, more fit people on their machines / the wall? I couldn't even watch anything on the TV screen, it just bored me SO much.
I tried classes, too, but you know how it is when you can't dance, you can't keep up with everyone else, you can't get the moves down...it's just sad. I couldn't do that anymore either.
Working out at home? No, not so much. My kids were small and thought that "home workout" meant "time to join in and laugh a lot," which I, very maturely, interpreted as "making fun of Mom," and I just couldn't do the home workouts anymore, either. Even if they were just kids being silly I felt like a complete idiot dressed in Spandex and jumping around in my postage stamp-sized living room.
Eventually, all that pity and loathing pointed inward turned into me mostly sitting on a sofa all day, periodically eating potato chips or cake (possibly a whole cake, once, but I can neither confirm nor deny). Shockingly enough, pouting does not burn very many calories. I know, right! How can this be? Especially when one puts so much effort into pouting. Such elaborate face-saving stories that are told to justify the pouting. Such sighing to be had, when certain very kind-hearted people would try to solve my problem (of basically un-gluing my rear end from the reclining chair). You would really think the calorie investment would be greater.
Alas, it is not. Pouting will not make one physically fit. Neither will sitting around and thinking about how nice it would be to join a gym, throw around some weights, and maybe eventually heal the bad knee. This I have learned.
Which brings me to....today. At the gym. Impossibly, I was at some kind of weight-lifting class (low weight, high reps) and I found myself looking the instructor in the eyes and saying "I plan on competing in the Spartan race next year." Yes, I said that. Yes, she's a weight-lifting instructor. Yes, it seems I have finally, completely, yet not unexpectedly, lost my mind. But I said it. And I meant it.
It would be great storytelling if, at this point, I either finished on a high note: I'm stronger than I thought I was! or, better yet: I tried valiantly but after wallowing in a pool of sweat and vomit only five minutes in, I gave up. Neither of these things happened. I'm about as shapeless as I thought I was, and I could barely keep up even with the lightest baby weights (you want to know how light? Try one-pound weights on either end of the almost hollow, nearly-weightless barbell. That would be TWO POUNDS. That's right. TWO. Deux. Dos).
About ten minutes into the class I knew I would be suffering tomorrow from horrible soreness, and since I'm such a wimp I immediately made a plan to track down some young, chiseled trainer to find me a recovery drink. God in His Eternal Mercy provided me a smoothie bar wherein one may order a smoothie, with a shot of L-Glutamine. If you've never heard of L-Glutamine, and you work out...what are you, some kind of masochistic pain freak? Please. There's no need for that kind of misery. (Unless you like that kind of misery. But that's a whole 'nother thing, and that's not what this blog is about.) L-Glutamine is a magical amino acid that helps you feel less sore after working out. In all honesty, L-Glutamine is the only reason I will push it, even a little bit, in a workout. If there were no L-Glutamine, it would take me approximately 137 years to work up to the kind of 30-minute "Chair Yoga" session usually reserved for the silver-haired crowd. Seriously: L-Glutamine is The Bomb!
Which brings me to now. Here I am, contemplating the sheer lunacy of telling EVERYONE IN THE WORLD that I plan to run in the Spartan next year.
And it seems like a story that should be told. That I need to tell, if for no other reason than to learn to loosen up and laugh at myself. But maybe, the real reason is this: I need to have a goal. And the deeper reason might possibly be: I need to do something outrageous.
Postscript: I DID NOT read this blog before making my big (dumb) decision. It just so happened this guy wrote this blog entry and it's on the Spartan site tonight. I like to think it's God's Way of Telling Me I'm Right To Do This.
http://blog.spartanrace.com/note-to-self-remember-to-train/
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| Going under barbed wire, through mud. |
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| Running through fire. Yes - FIRE. |
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