What To Do When Your Children Try To Kill You Off Early

Last year, my oldest daughter, who lives in Boston -- did I mention she is an attorney? < insert image of proud mama beaming like this has something to do with how I was in labor with her for 14 long, grueling, horrendously painful hours with NO epidural, and absolutely nothing to do with her own intelligence> --called to tell me she had started this program named C25k. It sounded vaguely outer-space-ish to me, perhaps because in my uniquely circuited  brain I kept somehow confusing it with  Mystery Science Theater 3000, which is often abbreviated MST3k.

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At any rate, she kept telling me she'd started this cosmonaut program (or whatever) and thought I would love it. I listened with half an ear, as mothers of four are wont to do, until I realized it was a RUNNING plan. "What?? I am 52 years old!! I've never exercised in my entire life! Are you trying to get your inheritance early?" I asked incredulously. "Do you EVER remember me doing anything even vaguely healthy??" She had to demur that she did not. I was pleased with her recall.

But she kept on about it until finally, on New Year's Day 2011, I decided if I didn't try then, I was only going to become more decrepit and wizened and would never be able to maintain my health enough to someday live with each child just to pay them all back for what they put me through in their teenage years. So I climbed onto the dusty state-of-the-art treadmill which takes up a good third of our bedroom, pushed start and -- nothing. I discovered it needed to be plugged  in.

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I quickly realized I was in over my head.  This plan meant I had to actually move!! For minutes at a time!!

Here was the schedule for Week 1 Day 1 for Couch To 5k:
5 minute warm up
Run 30 seconds
Walk 45 seconds
Run 45 seconds
Walk 60 seconds
Run 60 seconds
Walk 90 seconds
And -- most unbelievable of all --repeat this THREE TIMES!! FOR THREE DAYS A WEEK!! AND IT GOT HARDER EACH WEEK!!!
(Then cool down with a 5 minute walk. You should always have a cool-down period.)

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Were they insane????? The people who created this training program must have found directions for torture from the Spanish Inquisition! I mean, really -- I was 52, for Pete's sake! I could keel over and die! I could pull something! I could have to pee! I could.......SWEAT!

Now, there is nothing worse to me than sweat. I was born, bred and raised in the South, and I will die a Southern belle. In the South, we "glow."  During this program, my "glow" plastered my hair to my head, dripped into my eyes, ran down my back, slid over my paunch,  and puddled around my feet. I learned to sling that "glow" off my forehead with a perfected flip that even a professional athlete would have been proud of.

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Side note:  I look absolutely nothing like Vivien Leigh (I could only wish) but if you are going to put a photo of a Southern belle in your blog to represent you, you want the epitome of belleishness. Hey, I'm not crazy, I get to pick the photos.

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 Side note: My husband said in all fairness I should show who I actually look more like.                                                                        
 So, each day I'd venture out into the neighborhood, hoping not to run into anyone I knew (read my "Boo Radley" blog of how I have frightened small children), and,  iPhone in hand, I'd push the C25k app. Off I would glow, gung-ho for the first 5-minute warm-up walk, but then that darn bell would ring, and a voice would pleasantly scream: "RUNNNNNNNNNNNN!"

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Now, running 60 or 90 seconds may not seem much to you. It doesn't even sound that difficult as I type this. But time is a funny thing, my friends. Have you ever noticed how fluid it is? When you are enjoying something, time simply flies by on joyful little sparrow wings. Before you know it, practically before you can even register the pleasantry in your brain, it's over. It has rushed right by you like a barrel over Niagara Falls.                                                          

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Yet the opposite is true for bad things, right? People who are in terrible accidents or have had some type of traumatic occurrence say that time stops for them. We've all seen those horror movies, where the crazed knife-wielding maniac in a hockey mask is approaching the sniveling, screaming, scantily clad slutty girl in slowwwwwwwwwwwww moooooooootion, so slowly she could easily escape, but no, of course not, she is a girl and so the director has her trip and fall over her own stupid feet, not once but maybe three or four times.....ummm, yes, well, anyway, when bad things happen, time really drags, that's my point.

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Those 60 seconds of running became for me a river of Elmer's glue- and wet-cement -laden molasses paved not with tumbled rocks but sticky fly strips holding each foot captive.  I was slogging for a decade through a yawning chasm of glowing, gasping, on-the-teetering-brink-of-death-right-before-you-tip-over-into-it agony by forcing my body to do something it had never done before, 52 years of every ache and pain I'd ever experienced rolled into tiny, torturous, 60-second increments. I hurt. I hurt bad.

But each day, I got out there -- because if my daughter could do it, so could I. More importantly, SHE thought I could do it. What mother wants to let her baby chick down? Oops, didn't mean to show my maternal side, I'm trying show my bad-ass side right now. Raar.

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And an amazing, miraculous thing happened along the way.  Those 60 seconds of running got --- easier. I quit hurting. I began to look forward to getting out there. Each day, I began to think of the challenge as something I was going to push myself to achieve, and best of all, I began to believe I could triumph.
                                                                           
Flash-forward a year. I've run 3k, 5k, 8k and 10k races, and I've won a little age-group bling. Pretty proud of it, actually. I'm looking forward to running a half-marathon soon -- training for it as we speak. So, what I want to tell you is this:

                                                                               
Get out there and make your dream a reality. You CAN do it!! Whether you  want to start C25K yourself, or you want to take a yoga class, or you secretly yearn to run a marathon, my advice is never, ever give up! Because the best revenge when your children try to kill you off early to get their share of the will is -- you'll be in such great shape they'll never be able to catch you.

Is That Boo Radley Hiding Behind My Door?

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Let me put your mind at ease right from the start -- no. No, it was not. No sense in stretching out the drama for no reason.

Because -- equally frightening -- it was me. Or to be more precise, it was the reflection of me that I glimpsed in the mirror on my door:  the horrifying sight of myself,  in full, glorious, total deconstruction after completing a long run.

Some women look gorgeous in their running regalia. They have daintily feminine, tight little racer-back tops paired with vibrant capris, color-coordinated wicking socks, and gorgeous, to-die-for multicolored running shoes. They have their perfectly pony-tailed, long, flowing, Rapunzel-like blonde locks (they're always blonde, aren't they? --insert jealous smirk here--), and their adorable matching Bondi-bands, and they almost prance across those finish lines, feet barely touching the tarmac.

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I, on the other hand, look like some stumbling nightmare Tim Burton hallucinated while coming down after a weekend of meth- and bourbon-bingeing and kinky sex with prostitutes. First off, usually when I run, I wear black. Obviously, it's the most slimming choice :) but even better than that, it hides the humongous sweat circles -- no, I can't even call them circles, they are sweat galaxies -- that are pouring in a deluge off my lumpy body. Did I mention I am a very pale person? Black is not the most fetching hue on albino-like people. So already I look like one of the Walking Dead before I even go on a run.

                                                                           

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Next, the challenge of my hair. I have worn my hair short for decades and just last year caved to the pleas of my youngest son who wore me down with his constant begging for me to "just grow it out and let me see what it looks like long, Mom." He said he had never seen me with long hair. Not true. I have shown him photos of me in high school, after swearing him to secrecy and threatening I would boot him out of the will if he ever breathed a word of them to anyone. My suspicion is he has this idea that if only my hair were long, I would look like the mothers of his friends, who are all petite blondes with large breasts who formerly worked at Victoria's Secret and are a good quarter-century younger than I. It's heart-breaking, I know.

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But back to the hair. Red hair, not really flaming, but bright enough out under that merciless, God-forsaken, galaxy-sweat-inducing sun and when I've let it fade longer than the recommended 4-6 weeks, which is most of the time because do we really need to spend $160 to get our hair dyed? But that's the subject of another blog, I am sure. The hair. The hair is the thing. So, anyway, I have been letting this red shade of hair grow out for a while and now I have it in a sort of chin-length bob. Not a bad look when I'm all cleaned up, but definitely sort of Carol-Burnett-playing-Norma-Desmond when I'm in the midst of my plague (read my first blog post) or during/after a run.

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So, the other day, I was at the end of a long run, and I shambled upon a neighbor I had not seen in a while, with his two young children in tow. The girl looked at me in absolute HORROR. She actually turned her body away from me -- can you imagine?? THAT is how much she could not bear the sight of me! Ok, I knew I looked bad, but do people not teach their children manners anymore? Do they not instill  that when you see a 53-year-old woman who has run many, many, many, many miles (at least two) in the broiling 43-degree heat, it is not polite to involuntarily curl your lip in disgust? Gimme a break, I knew  I looked horrible! It was misty out too, which was definitely NOT my fault. My hair is fairly curly, which I fight every day to tame into that dang Desmond bob and when damp (either from sweat or rain-- so take your pick, it is always damp when I run), and I am wearing my Nike headband with the rubber grips to keep that &%$@ sweat out of my eyes (which I had surgically improved -- yeah, yeah, fodder for another blog post)-- my hair starts to poke up in little spikes all over my head. Not attractive, cool, punk-rock kind of spikes -- noooOOOoooo, God forbid I look cool -- it forms these awkward, lumpy (yes, I know I already used that word earlier in describing my body), alien little masses all over my head.
And my face was a bright, mottled red that I can only compare to our English bulldog Boudreaux's flubber when I take him to the vet and he gets overexcited and starts hyperventilating.

                                                                             
So you can see why perhaps I was a little startled and mistook my reflection as Boo Radley hiding behind my door.
My husband disagreed with me, however. "I don't think you look like Boo Radley at all. You look more like Michael Keaton in  Beetlejuice."
His bad luck -- he can't outrun me.

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