Time

I am a planner.  I have to be.  I manage two businesses, work more than full time hours as a travel nurse practitioner, mange the schedules of the four kids living under my roof and run a household.  Planning is the name of the game.  Even my marathon training has to be placed in neatly among the other pieces of the puzzle that make up my day to day life.  Last week, I would find  myself at the Outer Banks on vacation when what was scheduled was a glorious 2 mile recovery walk. I have recently rediscovered a little old school pre-country, Hootie and spent some time assembling a whole new playlist just for the occasion.  Yes friends, this was going to be epic.

Time why you punish me

Like a wave bashing into the shore,

You wash away my dreams

I firmly believe that athletes come in two varieties.   There is the natural born talent that, with a little bit of training, progresses quickly to be lightening fast.  I have always dreamed of being said athlete, but I am not.  Truth be told, I'm clumsy.  I fall up stairs, walk into counter tops, and as referenced in a previous blog, even break my ankle on a Lego.  So, to be honest, I am not all that graceful and I suppose that is part of the reason my physical gains are slower.  I find I have to be the hardest worker in the room and I seem to make progress at a much slower pace, certainly making time no friend of mine when it comes to this.  Therefore, taking on distance running has been one of the most glorious and frustratingly difficult things I have done to date.   This is why I look forward to the recovery walk so much.  It is that day in my training when I, and other turtles like me, can raise our middle fingers high at the stopwatch and just shake it out.  This particular walk though, this was something I looked forward to long before my arrival there last week.  I planned to walk a mile on the road until it ended at that section of beach in Corolla people were allowed to drive on.  There is very little in the way of housing up there, and I could just enjoy it crowd free as the beach is my happy place.  In fact, screw the app, I planned on three miles.

Time is wasting, time is walking,

You ain't no friend of mine,

I don't know where I'm goin',

I think I'm out of my mind

Ironically the moment I hit the beach, Hootie came on and I would soon realize this was not what I had planned.  It was 7:30 at night, the tide was coming in, there was no sand pack.  I would soon find myself walking at the shore line on a sideways incline, at times my feet going ankle deep in wet sand.  The surf was coming so quickly that dodging it, even at the shoreline, was hard.  There was wind and it was hot.  I found myself checking my watch, 1.2 miles.  My shoes were wet.  They were loaded with sand.  The ground was unstable, my brain was screaming at me to stop, but I made a promise to my accountability partner, and I had a plan.  The negative noise that would exist in my head later would be much worse if I failed either.  

Walking, wasting

You ain't no friend of mine

And I don't know where I'm goin'

Trudging along on the slant of the shoreline my legs started to fatigue, the hip I broke three years ago reminded me it was full of titanium, and the going got harder and harder.  I was pissed off I was missing the relaxation time I had long anticipated, and my very uncoordinated and ugly walk on uneven sand got angrier.  I felt the fear of the real possibility of a face plant in wet sand before it was all over. I was annoyed with the person I promised this to,  I was aggravated with other life trials I had no control over, and before long I would realize my deep thinking brought me well past the half way point as I stopped paying attention to where I was.  Now this journey was even longer.  I would turn around and fight my way back to the road, drenched, covered in sand, and oh yeah.....completely satisfied.

Can you teach me 'bout tomorrow 

and all the pain and sorrow running free

'Cause tomorrow's just another day

And I don't believe in time

Tomorrow did come after that walk.  I was somehow much lighter and had a certain satisfaction in conquering the surf and far surpassing my own plan.  I even quit being angry with my accountability partner, and we have resumed our friendship, which is a good thing as we have a business to run.  However, this experience had me thinking about how many times do we look forward to an event, only to show up and find it is not a relaxing beautiful beach sunset, but extended time spent on a taxing trek through deep wet sand that will test every fiber of our being?  I think the trick is to stay true to those who support us, stay true to yourself by following the plan, and lean into the challenge with determination, because what lives at the end is the ability to see that facing the unexpected hard things only makes us better in the end.  Only in that space can we truly see the best is yet to come.

Time without courage,

And time without fear,

Is just wasted, 

Wasted time

Suddenly I See

There's something that happens when you make sweeping positive changes in your life.  Yes.  There is positive feedback.  The compliment that comes with fitting in a size four or completing a difficult race.  However, there is something very few successful people talk about out loud. Haters.  I was reading an article recently by Joe DeSena, founder of Spartan Race, that asked a simple question,"Do you have enough haters to succeed?"  He talks about haters being essentially the armchair quarterbacks, sitting back in the comfort of said armchair and watching things unfold, ready to attack whatever they see, yet they never actually enter the game.  This was an article I really needed.  As my organization is rapidly growing, so are the haters.  They tend to crop up everywhere, from social media outlets, to in person comments.  They all seem to subscribe to the "you are doing it wrong, you can do it better or stop doing it altogether" mentality.  I would love to tell you I am good at raising a triumphant fist, telling them off and forging ahead anyway.  The truth?  My 45 years of insecurity and people pleasing has stood in the way of that, leaving me to at times, question the lofty goals I have in front of me, and wondering if I had the wherewithal to continue to collect haters as we rise.  I was mulling all of this over today stuck in traffic.

Her face is a map of the world

Is a map of the world

You can see she's a beautiful girl

She's a beautiful girl

And everything around her is a silver pool of light

The people who surround her feel the benefit of it

KT Tunstill.  I think in that moment I felt anything but a silver pool of light, probably not a great thing for someone in the motivational business.  My nagging overthinking brain was busy working on methods to change people's minds and walk away hater free, knowing that was likely not possible.  However,  I could hold on to the Fourth of July.  I took a team of 31 racers to The Firecracker 4 in Saratoga.  We came in third for the most race registrations, earning a donation to Karl Koelle and my 1DOS Foundation.  One year in existence, and we came in just behind the YMCA.  A win for sure.

Suddenly I see

This is what I wanna be

Suddenly I see

Why the hell this means so much to me

There was the race itself.  Our recipient of this year's fitness scholarship, Deana, it was at her longest race to date, four miles.  She is down 45 pounds and killing it every single day.  I had the honor, after my own finish, to jump back in the race to cross the finish line with her.  Here she was 20 feet from the finish screaming,"I can't!"  I screamed back at her,"You fucking can and you will!  GO!"  She did and we cried happy tears as she knows completing this means she is much more capable than she ever dreamed and that there are bigger things for her on the horizon.  I would find myself sitting in traffic looking at the pictures.  Here is that moment in time I was cursing at her at a family friendly charity event, with the,"Oh my"look on another friend's face as the profanity came tumbling out.  I would love to tell you that had not happened before, sorry Firecracker people, I know her.  I know when it is time to push and what form of pushing fits her needs.  It is then I see it.  There on the far right.  Adriana.  Smiling, head up, Adriana.  

She's got the power to be

The power to give

The power to see

To the outsider, it's just another runner supporting our recipient.  To me, it is so much more.  I had this same finish with her a year ago when she was on her own journey.  When her,"I fucking can't" came out ten feet from the finish at The Heart Association 5k, yet another family friendly event, sorry AHA, to which I responded with the same answer I gave Deana.  Here she is now a year later, the power to see her own vision, the power to be strong and fit, and the power to give back to those behind her.  No, this was a smile of absolute identification with our recipient and pride in how far she has come.  Suddenly seeing this was the A-HA moment I needed to know exactly why the hell it means so much to me.  At the end of both of these races,  I would go on to explain to both of them, as lifelong obese people, we have spent years stopping ten feet from the finish as our brains screamed at us to fail.  I was not letting that happen for either of them.

Suddenly I see

Why the hell it means so much to me

These photos alone reminded me that there may always be outside haters criticizing what we do, but getting in the game,  shining our silver pool of light to benefit those around us, and not pulling back in the finish will mean so much more to all of us. I suppose in time, my insecurities with the haters will lessen, or I will learn to deal with them better, but looking at these photos reminds me that we are just getting started and the best is yet to come.