Journey is so Pissed

Being the head of a motivational health and fitness company, Team 1DOS, I spend an hour each morning updating my social media presence with motivational quotes to help keep my my mighty shiver of great whites moving.  As I was perusing my usual quote sources today, I ran across this one.

I have seen it before, but still, cracks me up every time.  In fact, I was still chuckling about it as I was pulling into Orangetheory today.  Wait.  It was today.  April 30.  It was April 30, 2015 that I entered this studio for the first time.  Today was my four year anniversary of training here.  I was suddenly flooded with memories from that day.  I was 85 pounds heavier wearing my XXL t shirt and hoping not to look foolish.  What was I doing there anyway?  I could not hang with these people.  These people ran.  They used that rowing contraption.  I couldn't do that either.  In fact, in my first few months here, I used the phrase "I can't" like a comma.

Looking back, maybe this meme is not as funny as I originally thought.  The years leading into the start of my transformation were loaded with multiple tragedies and stressors.  There was the passing of three very close family members in the same year, none of which were expected.  There was the stress of a three year extremely unpredictable Haitian adoption process to get our two youngest children home,  while at the same time dealing with  the difficulties of parenting our other adopted children of trauma, all with unique issues, demanding different parts of my emotional motherhood.  There was a cross country move to avoid the racial bias of where we were living, as we found ourselves to be targets in our own community.  Thing after thing.  Crisis to crisis.  It would seem all of my plate spinning to manage it all had gotten me to a place I stopped taking care of myself or believing in my own abilities.  With years of that, Journey should have been mad as hell.

It makes me wonder how many times we take all of the stress, crises and disappointments that go with this thing called life and use them as a crutch to lose all faith in ourselves to carry on and learn to live as our best selves.  How many times do we let the,"I can't's" become so loud that believing is no longer an option?

That being said, you may be asking how my four year anniversary workout was.  I suppose if I were some sort of romantic novelist this would be the part where I would explain "I can't" has totally left my vocabulary, I now run a five minute mile and squat 200 pounds.  Let's go with no to all three things.  Did I sing some heavy metal with my besties on the treadmill like usual?  No to that too.  Today, I had a unique day when my close gym family members were missing.  Work, life and kids had kept them out of our usual 8:45 class.  It was me.  Just me in a room full of non sharks attacking one of the hardest tread blocks I had come by in some time.  Twenty-two minutes of rolling hills with no walking recovery.  Here I was with the two things I thought I hated most, working out alone and running on the hill. As I got to work for the 2.35 miles for the 22 mins I found myself on the godforsaken inclines, I thought back to the scared power walker I started out as.  The one who came in the door four years ago and would not have covered much more than a mile in the same amount of time.  I was the same person who was terrified to try anything outside the studio because I didn't trust myself to do anything alone and not quit.  Yet here I was, showing up for myself conquering things I would have responded,"I can't" to four years ago.  These may not be olympic record setting things, but large victories in my journey to believe I can be my best self.  After conquering this class, the shout out from the trainer, who has walked the whole road with me, was that much sweeter and reminded me showing up for hard things and trusting myself to get them done is far more satisfying than avoiding them because they are uncomfortable.  

I'd love to tell you that this was the happy ending of a long journey and that the trials of life have not struck me in the last four years as I have walked this road, but they have.  The worst of which the sudden loss of my mother under circumstances I'd rather not think about.  There were other trials such as major health problems under my own roof, and children with their own unique issues.  No, all those plates are still spinning, with the addition of a very special plate that is held central.  It is the "show up for myself" plate.  That one is central and securely spinning which has ironically made all the other plates much easier to manage.  So, friends, I think at the end of the day our job is to not piss Journey off.  They are an iconic 80's band after all, and that would be just wrong.  Instead, we don't stop believing the greatest version of ourselves is truly attainable regardless of where you came from or what life is handing you at any given moment, and to hold on to that feeling that the best is truly yet to come.  

Celebrating the Finish Line

The last few weeks have been absolutely crazy.  Working lots of hours, coordinating a challenge for my business, and this past weekend coordinating a large team to run a half marathon on Saturday, with a fund raiser for my foundation on Sunday, followed by leaving said fund raiser and driving directly out of town, only to be gone for work for three days.  All in, I believe I have been on this kind of roller coaster for about six weeks.  Saturday morning I would coordinate the teams, take all the obligatory social media pre-race pics, locate the corals, adjust all my race gear, and suddenly the gun would go off and I would find myself running down the rail trail with a sea of other half marathoners on a beautiful spring day.

I don't know where I'm goin'

But I sure know where I've been

Hanging on the promises in songs of yesterday

An' I've made up my mind, I ain't wasting no more time

Here I go again, here I go again

Ah yes.  Whitesnake, the consummate 80's hair band.  Reminds me of my college days with my gigantic hair supported with the superhuman hairspray, better known as Aquanet, that my sorority sisters and I consumed so much of. I am still quite certain there is a large hole in the ozone over 200 South Summit in Iowa City. As I chuckle about that it dawns on me I am alone.  Jogging along in a sea of humanity alone in my own thoughts and music for the first time in a while, as life's busy has consumed me for some time.  I would see the sun starting to poke through the clouds, enjoy the newness of a beautiful 13 mile downhill rail trail and revel in how strong I was feeling in those early moments.  Check the pace.... first mile 10:02.  Well shit.  My half pace is really more of 11:30, but this was down hill I was good.  I was ready to roll.

Tho' I keep searching for an answer

I never seem to find what I'm looking for

Oh Lord, I pray you give me strength to carry on

'

That is, I was fine til I wasn't.  My strength began to waver, my hips and quads began to hurt.  As it turns out, a 13.1 mile downhill course was not easier, it was different.  Coming out of the gate too quick, new muscles activated, running alone, as my last half was in Disney and run with my son, suddenly everything was a whole lot harder.  I started walking at intervals at mile 9, and I really did hope I had the strength to carry on. In the end, my splits would get progressively slower and I would finish a painful 2 minutes behind my half that I did in October and nine minutes shy of my goal.  I would spend the next few days analyzing what I did.  I should have come out slower.  I should have had more even splits.  I should have trained longer distances.  If only I did....  I should have.... Days of this self questioning.

Then it would happen.  A seasoned distance runner in my motivational group would post a simple meme,"celebrate the finish line, not the finish time."  I was so busy being disappointed in my lack of PR, or my slower time from October I had missed it. 

And here I go again on my own

Goin' down the only road I've ever known

Like a drifter I was born to walk alone 

As it turns out, going out on my own, lost in my own personal race critique, I had missed a lot of things that happened in that race far beyond the timer.  There was the amazing scenery of the newly opened rail trail in Upstate New York, complete with rolling streams, and the sun shining through the trees on a beautiful spring day.  Not to mention being part of an inaugural half on this very trail.  There were the thousands of well wishers who gave high fives as I passed by and rang cow bells.  There was being passed by one of my trainers as he patted my arm and told me to keep going.  I would later be passed by two of the most seasoned distance runners I am blessed to call friends, one at mile 3, one at mile 4, who would both ask if I was OK and to tell me,"you got this," reminding me of the amazing people in my life committed to my success.  I would be completely struggling at mile ten, only to hear,"Sweet Caroline" which was my mom's favorite song, to remind me once again, even though she is not physically here anymore, she can still find ways to show me she is always in my corner, which admittedly brought some tears through the physical pain I was in at that moment.  Ultimately, I would hit the finish and be met by a few of my faster teammates who cheered for me like any solid teammate would.  Later, I would see an epic finish by a previously injured teammate, a smile that could only be characterized by freedom across the face of another who has lost over 100 pounds as she finished, and the finishes of two others who had taken on their epic first half marathon.  

I now begin to wonder, how many times do we go out again on our own, working on getting our own pace right, trying to power through the tough stuff, yet drowning in our own disappointment when we miss the mark we have set for ourselves, and later obsessively trying to figure out how to do it better.  Probably, the better focus is in on the achievement itself, taking advantage of the amazing people and stops along the way that got us there regardless of timing. 

 In the end, we did celebrate at the finish.  We raised our individual bottles of prosecco, as is our 1DOS tradition, had a lot of laughs, took turns at the massage tables, and took the most epic after shots to date.  For me, maybe the walk alone thing as Whitesnake suggests is not quite the right choice but, there is something this song gets right on the money.

An' I've made up my mind, I ain't wasting no more time

It's time for me to continue to invest in solid training, stop worrying about the PR, begin to revel in the fact that I have the most amazing half sisters (13.1), embracing that the journey to the goal will always teach me more than any PR, and most importantly stand firm in the knowledge that the best is yet to come.

Closer to Free

About four months ago, I took a traveling nurse practitioner job covering the eastern side of New York.  Consequently, I find myself on the road a lot and am learning how to occupy my time traveling from site to site.  I have discovered the beauty of audio books, and the rediscovery of music from days gone by.  Earlier this week, I found myself making the trek from Utica to Oneonta.  It's a straight shot south through the hills of central New York on country highways.  Sounds great right?

Well, not really, there was something oddly familiar about this drive.  Up, down, around, 55mph, 30 mph, small town cop on the side of the road....  yes.  I know all about this.  About ten years ago this city girl from Chicago was dropped into southern West Virginia for five years.  Chicago is one thing.  It's a logical grid.  The streets steadily increase in number from the center of the city in three directions, north, south and west.  East simply lands you in Lake Michigan.  You can't really get lost in Chicago, you simply go to the nearest corner and look up and read the street sign  1400 North is 14 blocks north of the loop.  Easy.

West Virginia brought with it a learning curve of sorts though.  First, I had to augment my practice of medicine with adding a good understanding of the role topical vegetables and black salve played in the treatment of infection.  I would later become proficient at administering antivenom on the occasional Sunday when the snake handling church goer was bitten by the copperhead also present at said service. Mostly though, I had to learn to understand local sayings, my drive through central New York this week reminded me of one such saying,"as the crow flies."  When you live in hill country this is indicative of how far away a place is from an aerial perspective, rather than a road perspective.

Living on the top of a hill there, just about everything was located on some other hill.  To get anywhere it took trekking down the mile long hill from my subdivision that looped around once to get down.  It was steep and slick in the winter and, if I was really lucky, I would have to wait for the gaggle of wild turkeys to clear to even hit the bottom to begin to take off to someplace else.  The bottom may hold some piece of farm equipment like I encountered this week on my New York drive slowing me to 15 miles an hour in a 55 mph zone, and then at some point I would have to cross the river that ran through the town at the bottom of my hill, and begin to ascend someplace else depending on where I was going.  Some of those hills had gravel and mud, others difficult to pass with two vehicles, causing me to have to pull off on a narrow shoulder to allow someone to pass, where I only hoped the guard rail, inches from the passenger door, would hold if disaster struck. Yes, my New York drive was exactly like West Virginia driving.  Through my frustration of the drive, the Bo Deans attempted to distract me from the annoyance of it all.

Everbody wants to live, like they want to live

And everybody wants to love, like they want to love

And everybody wants to be closer to free 

Yeah, I wanted to be free.  Free of the freaking tractor in front of me.  It's 55, he's going 10 without a care in the world.  I needed to get to work. Why am I winding around seemingly in circles through an endless sea of country roads that seem to lead to noplace?

And everybody needs a chance once in a while

Everybody wants to be, closer to free

Yeah, I would have loved to have had the chance to be free on that drive.  You know, like the crow. I would simply take off flying, avoid the spaghetti bowl of country roads and be earlier to work. I was becoming extremely impatient until I suddenly found myself emerging in Cooperstown. The Baseball Hall of Fame on my right.  Being a catcher for 12 years of my childhood coupled by my love of the Cubs, suddenly the bright green of the fields and the building itself began to lift the frustration I was feeling at the time.  

And everybody wants a good, good friend

Everybody wants to be, closer to free

I found myself excitedly using voice text to share where I was in a group chat with my business partner and finance guy, both huge baseball fans, albeit for the wrong teams....(go Cubs).  I may have enjoyed their jealousy a little too much in that moment.  Nonetheless, in those moments I began to wonder how often we look at what exists on the next mountain and dream about the day we can just be the crow and fly over with ease.  I maintain this is what keeps us wanting to be free but never quite getting there.  Perhaps the better thing to do is to start the trek down the slippery hill finding new ways to gain traction.  Try to learn the lesson from the ballsy gaggle of turkeys that  proudly occupies the road and stands between us and forward progress.  Even the beloved farmer in his excruciatingly slow farm equipment at the bottom of the hill, can help us to learn that moving slow is still forward, and there is something to be said for patience.  As we cross the river, leave the hill behind and begin to ascend to what exists on the next hill, we should take the time on the single lane road to pull aside for someone else and trust our supporters  to fully embrace our location in the climb and to serve as our proverbial firmly grounded guardrail, not allowing us to fall off the mountain.

Everybody one, everybody two, everybody free

So, maybe in thinking about it, it really isn't the crow who is free.  He will never learn the lessons along the way that go with the fight in getting from hill to hill.  He will never know the satisfaction of getting what he always dreamed of and knowing it was because he dared to brave a difficult journey.  Maybe the trick to being truly free is to select the hill, take off down the mountain, and not be afraid to press on no matter what may stand in our way.  As for me?  I seem to be settling into travel life and learning to see not so subtle reminders on my journeys, like this rainbow from my commute Sunday morning, that the best is yet to come.