Monday, February 17, 2020

Do You Ever Feel Like a Plastic Bag


The second week in February is always a bit rough for me.  It is my mom's birthday, she would have been 75, as well as the four year anniversary of my broken hip.  If we pay attention, we learn life hands us a few truly defining moments.  For me, the broken hip was one such moment.  From a lifetime of obesity to being fit for the first time in my life at the ripe old age of 46.  The fated x-ray would reveal the displaced femoral neck fracture that needed a hunk a hardware and six weeks out of commission.  A ridiculous dose of reality.  If I am being honest, I would love to say I had osteoporosis.  I would love to say I had a major fall or trauma that brought me to that place.  I didn't have either.  I had obsessively trained.  Two hours of OrangeTheory a day, outside runs on top of that, plus yoga, plus, plus, plus.....  The pain truthfully began months before, but I wasn't stopping.  I was fit and I was going to stay there, there was no going backwards at that point.  A small slip in the dining room on a blanket just before Christmas caused me terrible pain, but I never hit the ground, so I convinced myself it wasn't serious.  The only flaw in that logic was I couldn't walk.  It didn't matter, I would use crutches when I needed to and  I would keep going for six more weeks.  I had decent days and bad days, but I was still going.  I tried yoga, the chiropractor and hell, the day before the x-ray I rode an exercise bike for two miles convincing myself a little shake out was all that was needed.  That is until reality hit.  I had broken the biggest bone in my body all by myself.  In retrospect, I would learn I had overtrained until I had a stress fracture that ultimately came apart.  This derailing was squarely all on me. 

"Do you ever feel like a plastic bag,
Drifting through the wind,
Wanting to start again" 
                                                                              - Katy Perry,"Firework"

As I was wallowing in the grief of losing my mom and the enormity of the circumstances of my hip fracture this week, Sirius Radio chose to play this.  I remember when this song came out.  It was 2010, my son was in junior high and had learned how to manipulate the car radio from the front seat.  He loved to put this song on for his otherwise metal loving mom.  He would sing along,"Do you ever feel like a plastic bag..."  I always had the same answer. "No, because that's ridiculous.  Nobody feels like a plastic bag."  Over time it became the running joke.  He would sing it, I would get annoyed and once again the teenage boy had gotten the best of his Guns 'N Roses loving mom.  

"Do you ever feel, feel so paper thin,
Like a house of cards,
One blow from caving in"

Suddenly hearing this song with new ears, I am realizing this song was way more than plastic bags.  Recovering from this injury proved to feel much like a bag in the wind or a very fragile house of cards.  I couldn't do anything early on.  I could not get dressed without sitting down or even carry a cup of coffee across the room as my newly appointed crutch friends required the use of my hands.  I was a far cry from two a days at OTF.  In a sober confession here, I will even admit, following an attempt to put my underwear on while standing up right after surgery, and realizing I could not do it, I would let out a colorful string of profanity followed by slamming the toilet seat down so hard it broke in half.  I would never be ok again.  Everything I had worked so hard for was going to slip away due to one stupid self induced injury.  Oh yes, the pity party was well attended early on.  

"If you only knew what the future holds,
after a hurricane comes a rainbow"

Ultimately I would pull myself together, thanks to the same Katy Perry loving son who would drag my sorry ass to the gym ten days post op, crutch it in there and fight the senior citizens for the arm bike each day that followed.  As his early dubbed Batman to my Robin he would take his role seriously and help me to find other things to do physically.  I could work core, and got to the place I could handle the arm bike for ten miles a day.  Without him, I am not sure I would have found the spark I needed to get through it all.   I even was able to go back to work two weeks after surgery and crutched it around the ER seeing patients like a boss for a month.  

"Do you know that there's still a chance for you,
'Cause there's a spark in you"

Sometimes in life we are going 100 mph.  We think we have it all together, day in day out, and we have all the answers.  When really we are one slip away from not being able to put our underwear on standing up.  So, I think the trick is when the profanity has cleared, and the toilet seat is replaced, it's time to dig deep, find the spark, look for new directions and surround ourselves with those who fan the flames.


"You just gotta ignite the light,
And let it shine,
Just own the night,
Like the Fourth of July"

I suppose if I am really looking back on the last four years, I have made a lot of progress in finding balance.  Truth be told I am still a bit of a novice at training smarter, but am certainly better than I was 4 years ago.  I have even been able to run 14 Spartan Races, two Dopey's and a handful of other halfs and 5k's.   I'd love to say that every medal represents yet another personal accomplishment. My epic comeback, or my victory over obesity.   In small part that is true, but my real accomplishment does not lay in faster race times or stuck spear throws.  Every race I have done, I have had the honor of bringing newbies.  Each medal for me represents showing others they can ignite their own light, and accomplish things they never thought possible. That right there is truly finding my personal rainbow after a category 5 hurricane.  As I grieve a mom who should have been 75 this week, I'd like to think she would be proud of what I have done in recent years and my wish is that she has found a rainbow of her own. Otherwise, I suppose I should come clean with my son that I have, after ten years gotten past the opening line of this song and truly understand what it is to burst out of the storm like the bright lights of the 4th of July, but to lose the good natured teasing of a 23 year old growing up way too fast is not something I am quite ready for.  Instead, I will continue forward one foot in front of the other and look to my personal proverbial sky for the next burst of color as I know the best is yet to come. 




                                       

Sunday, February 2, 2020

The GPS Dot of the Treadmill

Being an obese kid made gym class kind of a nightmare.  There were the required 1 mile runs that always ended the same way.  I would have a grandiose notion that taking off at a decent speed I could somehow magically run that 8:30 mile like everyone else, when in reality  I could barely walk a 15 minute mile. These runs always ended the same way.  A few yards in, I would sputter and wheeze and end up walking the lion's share of that mile.  I would try to run as best I could, but always had to stop and walk.  If I was really lucky, I could break that 13 min mark, but not without enduring the taunting and teasing from my classmates who had long finished their mile and were now witnessing this ridiculous show of physical prowess.  It was the 80's.  Most schools had the token fat kid, and in my school it was me. Childhood obesity was not what it is now in the digital age... but that is a topic for another time.

 So, I guess that is why when I started this journey into wellness 5.5 years ago, I chose the treadmill. I knew two things.  I could walk, and the tread could control my pace so I would not have the humiliating walk that followed me trying to run at speeds my body clearly could not handle.  It totally worked too.  I worked my way up from a slow 3.5 mile walk to jogging base paces and beyond.  Yeah, I saw those posts where people referred to it as the "dreadmill".  I suppose they were just haters because at the time I didn't get it. What I knew was I was on it and for the first time in my adult life I was succeeding.


This week I had the opportunity to do what us moms do best.  I got to sit down with my oldest son, who is now 23 and trying to find his way in an adult world.  He still seems to have one foot firmly planted in late adolescence and one tippy toe into the adult world, spinning his wheels while trying to figure out how to get his whole self propelled forward.  What he needed was what most kids need his age.  He needed to see exactly where he came from, figure out where he is, but more importantly set concrete goals to open up the road ahead to figure out just what this adult world held for him.

This led me to think about that treadmill again.  Yes, I could control my pace.  No, I didn't have the embarrassment of misjudging my own abilities and having to walk.  However, if I am being honest, all along, the OCD in me was tripped up with trying to use my fitness tracker while I was on the damn thing.  My watch never matched what the treadmill had to say, and the GPS was downright confused.  It would draw lines on a map of me covering the same 5 feet until the map simply had a dot on it.  No beginning and no end, just a dot with step distances that never actually matched what I was doing.  Yeah, I could track "progress" through my fitness tracker app, but knowing it was not altogether totally accurate was constantly frustrating.

I found myself using this as an example to explain things to my son.  Entering the adult world and figuring it all out was kinda like using a GPS on a treadmill.  You keep looking for guidance, for some indication of where you have been so you can figure out where you are going, but in reality you are spinning your wheels, wishing for something better, but are actually in the same place you have always been. 

Over time, I have come to join the haters of the dreadmill.  I came to understand, leaving the control of me to outside forces kept me spinning the same belt of complacency and never actually growing into new destinations.  I have come to prefer to run outside.  I get pretty GPS pictorials showing me where I have been and where I am headed and  I don't have the white noise of the fitness tracker versus a machine.  Do I still screw up my pacing, go too fast and have to walk?  Of course I do, although, now I do it intentionally.  How fast can I really go, and for how long?  This fall I actually pulled off an 8:30 pace for a brief time, yeah it hurt a little, but I  had the most glorious wheezy walk when it was over, because I knew in that moment, I was way more capable than I ever gave myself credit for.  Something the control of a treadmill could never give me.

I think the trick is for us to start to recognize that at times what starts out as progress,  becomes just like us trying to use a GPS on a treadmill.  When we hit that wall of belt spinning complacency with white noise fueling frustration, it is time to step off the machine, out of the fluorescent lighting, and enter the world relying more on the proverbial GPS to show us where we have been and where we are headed and go hard at our goals without the fear of looking silly.  I venture to say in that space we will begin to realize what lies ahead is so much better than the GPS dot covering the same 5 feet for miles. Only in that place will we see the best is truly yet to come.