Slip, Scream, Repeat - Spartan Sprint Greek Peak Reflections

As I walked sure footed through the house just over two years ago, with armloads of Christmas gifts that I was transporting from my car to the indoor hiding spot of the front hall closet, I would not see the blanket on the hard wood floor that I would slip on forcing my left leg out so quickly that the stress fracture, that was unbeknownst to me, would come apart snapping the top of my femur.  The surgery and long recovery, including 6 weeks on crutches in the winter, that followed would leave me with a brand new habit.  It is the screeching type of scream that lasts only a second, but seems to arise from the depths of my toes the minute I find myself slipping in any situation.  It can be ice on the driveway, or something as benign as a melted ice cube on the kitchen floor.  Nonetheless, it is there.  Every single time, it is there.

Saturday, I found myself taking on my first Spartan Race of the year.  It was the Winter Sprint at Greek Peak in Cortland, New York.  I had done this race last year.  I had it all under control.  Last year, it was three miles and brutally cold.  It was 12 when we started and 16 when we finished.  So, this year I kept saying I wasn't worried.  I had another year of training under my belt, and this was to be my fifth Spartan Race.  It would be warmer, a mere 32, and it would likely snow, but it wasn't 12, so I was pretty confident I had it handled.  What I didn't anticipate, was the change in weather, would dramatically change the race.  This year, in true Spartan style, the length was completely different.  At the finish our GPS read 5.39 miles, dramatically longer.  The winds proved to be a bit more punishing than last year, as the snow pelted our faces. 

Typically, anyone that races with me will tell you, I generally have one rule and that is when it comes to the experience, what happens on the course stays on the course.  This way, we feel a bit freer to voice our fears at the top of an obstacle, ok, that generally involves mostly me and my insane fear of heights.  The tapestry of four letter words that may exit our mouths can stay just where we left it, as a hovering cloud over the burpee station.  However, this race I will be bold enough to rat myself out.  What I did not plan on, in this race, were the abundance of two things.  First, there was mud.  Slushy wet deep mud that even the greatest of obstacle shoe could not necessarily grip onto.  Second, there was ice.  Much of the course by early afternoon was slick.  So, the continued slipping and sliding for miles allowed that scream I mentioned to come flying out of my mouth many times.  Foot slip, scream, repeat.  I will say this,  I was extremely fortunate to have an amazing team that patiently reminded me over and over that I was OK. 

Ultimately, I would find myself getting frustrated.  The screams were embarrassing, yet I could not seem to stop. At different points in the race, I would find myself stopped on one of  the declines simply hugging a tree wondering if I would ever be able to finish, stop screaming, and find sure footing again.  I began to think about an escape plan.  I would look around wondering if there was a way out.  The reality was, deep in the treeline four miles in, the only escape was through, one foot slip, one scream at a time.  I would see other racers who were so much bolder than I was in these moments, shimmying down the hill with the only vocal sound being a laugh or some sort of celebration of their conquering of the slippery slope. 

In the end, my team of six and I would jump the fire, get our medals and fight the ice the rest of the way down the mountain to the lodge.  In my five previous races, I had always been overcome at the finish line with emotion.  The joy of a hard fought battle, well rewarded with an awesome medal.  Not this time.  I was still living off the overwhelming uneasiness only fear can provide.


The next day, I would find myself in my obligatory Spartan Finisher's Shirt standing on the balcony of my room at the lodge, staring out over the mountain.  As I looked at the steep peaks that took so much out of me the day before, I was reminded of the multiple times in the past, a life challenge would suddenly nearly double in enormity and I would find myself hugging that proverbial tree on an icy mountain paralyzed with inactivity because things suddenly seemed so overwhelming.  However, I learned some things about hugging the actual tree on Saturday.  It's cold, it isn't any less icy and does not get me to the finish line any faster.  I realize now, the screams of fear along the way were really only my natural reflexes reminding me of a bad incident two years prior that is now a part of me just as much as the titanium screw in my hip.

I can honestly say, I have done five Spartan Races and each race has taught me something new.  This race reminds me that sometimes life is twice as hard as you plan it to be, with twists you do not count on and reactions you wish you didn't have.  However, through it all, the goal is to let go of the tree on the icy mountain, take on the slippery slope even if it means you might fall, or end up sliding down on your butt, because truly all trials come to an end and the satisfaction from overcoming the paralysis of inactivity will make it all worth doing.  My faithful sidekick racer, my son, and I have been talking a lot about repeating this particular race for a third time next year.  As the blister on my right heel heals, and the windburn on my cheeks goes away, my initial reaction of,"no, not again" may change as I just may have to challenge myself to take a page out the more experienced racers' book and become less frustrated with those parts of myself I cannot totally control, and enjoy the ride down.  Today, as I place the medal on the rack for a fifth time, I can honestly say, I believe the best is yet to come.

  

You're in the Jungle Baby

About 7 years ago, I was working as a nurse practitioner in a Level 1 Trauma Center in Charleston, West Virginia.  On the night shift, there was a young physician who would call for a pause in the provider area when she arrived.  We would gather around a tiny speaker as she ceremoniously would put her phone on a small speaker as we listened to,"Welcome to the Jungle" in its entirety prior to commencing our shift.  Somehow we needed to hear out loud,"do you know where you are?  You're in the jungle baby."  We would end the song mentally prepared for our night of high speed motor vehicle accidents, snake bites, local drug seekers and the occasional victim of the portable meth lab explosion.  The perfect song for the perfect circumstance. 

I guess that habit stuck as there are still times I find myself with this playing into my headphones as I walk from my car to the current emergency room in New York that I work in.  Meth is not really a local favorite in Albany, and the trauma center is down the street, but where I am now, the patients are sick.  The volume is high and the waiting room full.  At any given moment, to an outsider it would appear loud and chaotic.  There are monitors beeping, phones ringing, other equipment alarming and people racing around to try to manage it all.  I suppose any ER is its own jungle to a certain degree. 

I would suspect that after 7 years of practicing this type of medicine on the heels of practicing neurosurgery for 10 years, my senses have dulled a bit to the noise that seems to exist in my own head when it comes to dealing with the rest of life.  The commitments of my home life, running two companies, two clinical positions, kids, family, race training....  perhaps I truly did not leave the chopping down the deep brush with a machete to be able to see the jungle creatures coming at me only at work.  In fact, I was pretty sure I generally live in the jungle routinely.

This brings me to a simple question posed by a client recently.  She put up a post wanting to know simply what it was other clients were working on.  A simple question meant to garner support for our collective goals.  As I read through the posts, I saw physical challenges of running a mile, conquering a race, or committing to a number of minutes of cardio each week.  There were diet challenges for things like giving up fast food or increasing vegetable intake.  These were all commendable things.  My clients setting goals and moving forward.  However, I read through all of this, post 60 hour work week in the ER, and even though I was home, I could still hear the noise of the ER despite being in my own living room as brain tried to prioritize all of the things in my life that had been placed on the back burner as I was at work all those hours. 

It was then that I realized I had plenty of physical goals and a clear path to reach them complete with schedule.  What I didn't have was quiet.  How often did I take a little time to just be still?  Much as I love yoga, work and endurance training for my next race has taken that over to a degree as of late.  How about an evening of doing nothing?  Well, work commitments have put a damper on that as well.  No, I think I was way more in the jungle than I would have realized.  So, I took the leap and committed to one simple thing.  Silence.  Ten minutes a day I would be silent.  No music, no phone calls, texts or social media.  I would take to time to attend to the silence and see what happened.  Although this seems like a little thing, simple enough, the jungle way of thinking is such a part of me, it actually has become more of a challenge than running a Spartan Race.

Since making the commitment for silence, I have had to schedule it like my workouts.  Some days this exists in my commute to work, some days, like yesterday, it exists sitting at my desk at home watching the snow as it falls into the pine trees in my back yard.  Today, the snow is thick.  The flakes were huge and my poor pine tree now has branches dragging on the ground due to the weight of 10 inches of fresh snow.  Yet, it is quiet.  It makes no sound.  There are no roaring lions, howling monkeys swinging from tree to tree, or boa constrictors hanging off the branches, yet at the same time it is powerful enough to take down a 25 foot pine.  As the silence allows me to toss out needless noise from my life in ten minute increments I begin to realize, that all along I had been ignoring the final phrase of the iconic Guns 'N Roses song, yes, you're in the jungle baby....and you're gonna die.  Needless chaos and noise had overtaken the power of silence.  Concerns over things I had no control over, or wasting the energy on the disappointment of a less than perfect workout,  or worrying about one too many macros today.  I was missing out on all the great things, like, wait...I worked 62 hours and didn't miss a workout, or maybe my macros were not perfect... but three years ago I was 85 pounds heavier and the only thing I counted was how many snacks were left in the kitchenette by the big TV.  I had missed the celebrating the success by simply attending to the noise.

Now I am beginning to see that the silence is just as necessary as the badass heavy metal mental preparation that was my norm.  I am finding it provides a new sense of recentering required to take on the day.  Yes, I still exit my car at work, headphones on and play,,"Welcome to the Jungle" as that is the environment I am entering, and I am a creature of habit.  The difference now is the ability to enter the jungle more prepared due to the power of the silence that came before it, and learning to shut it off at times so as the song goes, I'm not... gonna die.   Instead, I believe it is time to treat the silence like I do my cardio....and up my goals and see what else I can discover.  I have a feeling it is like I always say, I will find the best is yet to come. 

Spinning the Plates, Two Year Reflections

I am really not altogether good at change.  People ask me how it is I manage two businesses, two jobs, five kids and a household.   Well the reality is, I am a scheduler to the enth degree. Each day it's like that woman you see spinning all the plates on the sticks.  Plate to plate, spin and spin, everything according to plan.  Yep, I got this.  In fact, I could probably tell you what a month from Thursday will hold for any given member of my household.  Once I made the decision to lose the weight  I was able to take this skill and finally learn to get healthy with it.  Three years ago, I started scheduling my workouts.  I made that time of equal importance to everything else, and I started losing the weight, finally. 

 Along the line, I was able to schedule more workout time into my week, because you know, if one workout a day was good, surely two were better.  I started adding more proverbial sticks and plates to accommodate more interval training.  Two pounds a week.  I had a plan and I was sticking to it.  Ramping up more and more.  Wait.  My left hip hurts.  Oh well, no harm, I can bike for a while and not run. It was fall anyway.  I really wanted to be able to run a 5k without stopping in the spring.  So, I could bike then.  No big deal.  Besides, at that point I had eight successful months and was only about 30 pounds from the weight I always wanted to be.  I had the calculations done when I would reach that.  Quitting was not an option, rest was not an option.  I was doing it.  For the first time in my life I was doing it.  So, I pressed on, ignoring the pain for three months, and taking high doses of motrin, until a slip on a simple blanket on a hardwood floor right before Christmas.  My already painful leg would go out quickly, and although I never really fell, the pain I felt in the hip was excruciating. I would spend the next six weeks telling myself the next day I would wake up, be walking crutch free and be ready to go back to the gym. After all, it was probably just a hip flexor tear.  This is what us medical providers do.  We diagnose ourselves.   That morning never came.  I finally had it x-ray'd only to learn I would have a full on femoral neck fracture, which apparently had started as a stress fracture months earlier, and had now come apart.  

That was exactly two years ago this week.  I now find myself on the anniversary of the surgery that would repair my hip, reflecting on the months leading into this and the ones that followed.  I remember every single thing about being in the hospital that night.  The nurses asking me if I needed more ice when, in actuality, I didn't even realize I had ice on my hip because it was numb.  To this day, the skin in the area remains that way.  I remember the drug induced haze of watching what seemed like 100 episodes of "Chopped"on Food Network.  The mocking of the crutches in the corner that would be my side kick for the six weeks that followed.  The texting of a friend who worked night shift, who's sole task that night was to simply keep me a little more sane.  

Mostly, though,  I was angry.  I had a plan.  I had built my original plan into an epic workout adventure where I was doing things I had never done before.  I had a weight loss schedule to keep.  I had a 5k to run. In the end,  I had to get my head around that I had attacked my exercise regimen with such vengeance, I had broken the biggest bone in my body.  At the time,  I wondered if I would ever be able to do anything I had planned.  My leg hurt, my plans were dead, I could not even carry a simple cup of coffee to the living room because of the damn crutches, and I had no idea what I was going to do.  This master plate spinner had found herself sitting in a pile of shattered china and broken sticks.  

I had finally begun to realize that my physical endeavors had become as short sighted as my quest for carbohydrates to deal with the life stressors that came before that. Realizing I was sitting in the rubble of the broken plates and sticks was actually as eye opening as the day when I was 30 and ventured onto the scale only to realize I had hit 296 pounds.  I had become so singularly focused on exercise and strict no carb dieting, that I was missing out on the other sides of being healthy.  I had forgotten the part about feeding my own soul to find the happiness that I always thought was associated with being thin and fit.  Ultimately, I was able to put the anger aside and look for other methods to feed my own well being.  I started the day I got home with ordering the greatest pair of pink and white striped Victoria's Secret jammy pants.  Not only was I going to recover, I was going to do it in a brand I always wanted to wear but could never fit in before now.  In fact, as I type this I am wearing those very pants. A simple reminder of a new beginning.

I would attack my diet with new vengeance so as not to fall back into bad habits as I stylishly occupied the couch during that time, and yes, I would even make it back to the gym on post op day 10.  I would crutch my way in and get in line with the little old ladies doing their cardiac rehab on the arm bike to get my tedious ten miles in.  It was not the high intensity training I was used to, but it was not giving up either.  Little by little I would work my way back, but seeing the process with all new eyes.  I learned to train smarter and began to see that the little things I did for myself mattered as much as the scale.  At this point, anyone who knows me will tell you I have now become a huge fan of the badass manicure and have been known to grab my 21 year old son and drive out of my way to Whole Foods just for a green juice, and to spend some time with a kid growing up way too fast.  

As angry as I was at that time for feeling I had lost it all, I can now see it was such a necessary part of my journey.  It taught me I had more than the black and white choice of over indulging with carbs on a bad day or obsessively exercising.  I can incorporate so many other things into being healthy, most of which have nothing to do with food or exercise.  So, yes, once again the plates are spinning, some of the original china had to be glued back together, and the sticks carefully repaired, and they may be spinning a tad slower than they were, but they are spinning, dare I say it, perhaps a little bit more graceful than they started out.  

As for me....have I completely reformed my obsessive ways?  To be honest, I am not sure that is possible entirely.  Not running every single day is a difficult choice, but I don't.  I have had to obsessively schedule my walking days just like I did my two a days in the beginning.  I do take the occasional active recovery day, but an actual recovery day of no exercise admittedly needs to be pushed upon me, and will likely cause some degree of anxiety.  However, I will do it.  Tomorrow is a recovery day for me, the first I have had in several weeks, or so I was gently reminded of by a friend.  I will make the conscious choice to spend one hour feeding my soul with amazing coffee in bed while olympics coverage before taking on a ten hour ER shift.

As to running my first 5k?  Yes, this happened too in the fall of 2016.  Well, if you count the Insane Inflatable 5k with my son, then yes.  My loyal blog readers will tell you I have now turned to Spartan Racing, but being able to do that first one without stopping with my loyal sidekick by my side after my recovery meant a whole lot.  Saturday, the day after my recovery day, I will host 50 others in a virtual 5k.  It will be my turn to watch my Team 1 DOS motivational clients take on this distance, some for the first time, some after years of being unhealthy.  I only hope that they learn from the journey as I have, that sometimes it takes an abrupt halt to the plan to see that sometimes our own short sighted plans are the thing that helps us to miss a much greater bigger picture.  The best is yet to come.

 

 

Travelling Blind

In 2005, I would find myself on a domestic flight from Moscow to Rostov on Don where we were set to adopt our third child.  As glamorous as it sounds, domestic flights in other countries, especially Russia, are not quite the same as domestic flights in the US.  As we boarded the plane in Moscow, we found ourselves on what appeared to be nothing less than the flashy Pan Am flights of the 70's.  There were curtains on the oval windows with mini curtain rods, and the flight attendants even seemed to be wearing the dated suits of the previous era.  However, it wasn't the 70's, it was 30 years later and in actuality one of the ceiling tiles of the plane would simply fall onto the floor prior to take off, exposing the oxygen masks, and the seat back would not hold causing a multi hour exercise in core strength trying not to land in the lap of the guy behind us. 

As the flight took off, I had several hours to think about what had led to this point.  Anyone who is a failure at fertility like I am, will tell you when you get to the place of an adoption, the desperation of a child to call your own comes before any amount of logic. Years of failed attempts and disappointments lead up to this point and you are just ready to have a child.  Any child.  Even more, you want them right now.  Two weeks before this flight, we had received a call from our coordinator.  She had asked how I felt about traveling blind.  This meant showing up in Russia on a certain date with no further information.  No referral ahead of time, no pictures or medical history, just show up and we will take you to an orphanage to meet a boy or girl under the age of three. The other option was to wait several months for an official referral.  To me, after years of waiting, two weeks sounded pretty  good.  So, here I was a couple hours into a flight on what appeared to be a broken plane to unknown parts of Russia, and suddenly a bit anxious about what I may have gotten myself into.

The landing did little to allay my fears. As the plane touched down, I saw no terminal.  No other planes other than a cargo plane in the distance.  It was a vast airfield with many runways, and as we hit the ground I would also notice there were bunkers.  Bunkers with artillery.  My anxiety went into full blown panic as I was suddenly struck with the fact that this was not an airport.  What the hell was this place? We were stopping.  Mid runway we were stopping.  The Pan Am like flight attendants spoke no English.  Wait.  Nobody around us spoke English.  The doors were opening, we were to deplane.  Deplane to what?  We were in the middle of a runway.  There were no buildings around. There was nobody to ask.  Even worse.  I had nobody to call.  Somehow none of the other passengers seemed concerned to be standing in the middle of a runway.  They would light their cigarettes and appear to share stories.  Even when the cargo plane that originally was in the distance, began barreling towards us on the same runway and the right wing would pass directly overhead, they appeared unconcerned and would continue their conversations.  I found myself repeatedly asking my husband,"where are we?  What are we going to do?"  He didn't know either.

Ultimately, two buses would pull up and people were divided into two groups.  The instructions they were giving were all in Russian. How do we choose a group?  Yuri.  That's all I could say over and  over.  Yuri is who we were told we were meeting.  Where is this guy?  He obviously was not on the airfield.  Now we were getting on a bus.  Would he know where we were?  Where were we going?  We ultimately chose a bus and got on. We would drive off the runway and through what ultimately  proved to be a Russian military base and out into the streets of Rostov on Don.  By then, I was nearly hyperventilating with fear.  Clearly traveling blind was a bad idea.  Suddenly, the bus would stop. We were in front of a random apartment building on a busy city street.  Everybody out.  Now I was really lost. Once we got off this bus we would be in the middle of a foreign city with no contacts.  My heart pounded out of my  chest as I came down the stairs until I became aware of a Russian man right there at the door of the bus.  He was looking right at me and laughing.  Flat out laughing.  I started to be offended until he spoke.  "Summers?"

It was Yuri.  My deer in the headlights look of panic had highly amused him.  The only  thing I could say in that moment was,"is it that obvious?"  Through his gales of laughter he admitted it was. Yuri would explain the airport was closed for renovation and they were redirecting flights to the military base.  He would take us to the hotel and have us wait by the phone for a couple hours until he could get our referral.  Ultimately he would call to explain our child was in Taganrog and we would go to the orphanage the next day.  He gave all details of the trip there, pick up times, driver's names and just as he was ready to hang up, I stopped him.  "Yuri?  What are we having?"

He answered with two simple words in a thick Russian accent,"Is boy."  I met that 13 month old boy the very  next day and as I type this, he is now 12 and hard at work playing Minecraft with a buddy on a lazy snow day not really able to grasp the crazy ride it took to get him home. He slipped into the family, a perfect fit, a unique child who continues to surprise me in so many ways each day, far beyond the baby I dreamed about for the years before he got here. 

Looking back, the notion of travelling blind to a foreign country where I didn't speak the language, and putting my simple faith in an adoption system that was tough to navigate, seems a bit crazy when you try to apply logic and reason.  However, It makes me wonder if this isn't the very thing we need to apply  to our own health and wellness.  I look at how many times I was absolutely desperate to be thin and healthy, yet I put that notion into a very small box.  My success was tied to one thing, the number on the scale.  I would pick out the commercial diet of the moment and say to myself,"this time I will try...."  The comment,"this time" indicating this was really more of a temporary path to the desperation fed quick fix, rather than a lifetime commitment.   

Unfortunately, my commitment to usual methods and a number on the scale held me back from seeing a much larger picture of what was truly possible if I was only open to the possibilities. In the beginning,  I was fortunate enough to have a trainer laugh at me just as Yuri had, through the many interchanges I had with him that started with "I can't"as I struggled to hang on to the old way while dreaming of something new.  Ultimately, he taught me the only one saying "can't" was me and that was a self imposed limit, not reality.   Racing was never something I had considered before now with my history of gym class failures, until yet another person, who seemed crazy, suggested a Spartan Race early on my journey, and encouraged me to not let loose of such a foreign idea along my path. As it turns out, he was right too.   I was way more capable than I ever imagined.

I also found I had to face the notion that all good things in my life to that point had been rewarded with food.  Fancy dinners for occasions or achievements, cake, a successful Thursday, yep.  It all required carbs.  I had to open myself up to the possibility that other rewards were out there.  I began scheduling a manicure or a massage every time I reached a small goal.   I now find these things matter just as much to my psyche as any number on the scale or my favorite pair of size 2 tall jeans.  I began to learn so many other things that seemed so foreign were so much more a part of my health and happiness than any number could be.  As I continue three years into this journey, I seem to find new things all the time to feed my soul and control my waistline that exist far beyond commercial diets or a treadmill.

So instead of doing what we have always done, and failing at attempts to see a number, maybe the better thing to do is to take our desperation for good health and travel blindly into a much larger journey into foreign concepts that live far beyond the scale that we originally held so dear.  Maybe it is time to look at bigger goals, with different methods led by people, who in our current state, do not seem to be speaking our language.  Although this seems terrifying at first, I would suggest it is the only way to find the lifelong perfect fit to what we have been missing all along. 

Learning from the Desperation for the Sixty-four Pack

When I was a kid, there was no such thing as the internet or really even a computer.  That would come later when I was in junior high and we got the latest Commodore Vic 20 with a cassette drive and green screen.  Nope, when I was a young school age kid we relied on things like smelly markers and fancy papers or Rockem Sockem Robots for our entertainment.  Possibly the biggest thing I remember about those days was being six and the months leading into Christmas that year.  All I wanted was a Crayola 64 Pack with a built in sharpener.  Oh yes.  I would not only have colors like burnt sienna or cerulean, but my crayons would never be dull again.  I would be capable of magical art work that would live on forever.  I spent weeks dropping the phrase "A Crayola 64 Pack with a built in sharpener" into absolutely every conversation.  I was so desperate for those life changing crayons that I was not going to miss an opportunity to get them. 

Well, as it turned out, Christmas came and went and I did not get them.  I couldn't tell you what I actually got, but I will say this,  I have yet, despite being 48, to live down that period of time.  To this day my siblings still bring up from time to time that I "harbor resentment over the 64 pack"  following this statement by one of my siblings is a pause as their eyes meet and all in unison say,"with the built in sharpener"  followed by gales of laughter. Yes, my crayon desperation has failed to die despite the 42 years that have passed.

Earlier this week, I spent some time talking to a motivational client.  She had her own desperation to see a particular number on the scale, however medical issues are preventing easy weight loss right now.  I began to recall my multi decade desperation for the same thing.  In life, I wanted two things from early on.  I wanted to be thin and I wanted to be a runner.  I had an idealistic number on the scale I wanted to be.  I was desperate to be there.  I did commercial diet after commercial diet.  It all ended the same way.  I would hit a plateau, chuck the process because clearly in  my mind it was not working, and then resign myself to failure.  When no diet could get me there, I decided to give pills a try. I had reached my lifetime maximum of 296 and was beyond desperate.   I had just moved to Dayton and found a weight loss physician in the yellow pages.  I would go to his office, but often he was not there.  A secretary would have me sign a book and hand me some shakes and a bottle of pills and off I would go.  That process did start to work but the doctor showed up less and less and on my last visit as I finally just left without seeing him, the secretary would call my cell to tell me he would meet me in the parking lot in just ten minutes if I could wait.  He pulled up in a rusted out van and handed me amphetamines from his front seat.  This was a brand new low in dieting desperation for even me.  Yes, he was a physician.  Yes, he was licensed to prescribe these, but there was probably a reason he had a supply of diet pills and was comfortable treating patients from a rusted out van.  It resembled a popular SNL skit featuring Chris Farley at the time. A couple years later, this same person would end up prosecuted for questionable prescribing practices and lose his license to practice medicine. Nonetheless,  my desperation never really ended, and ultimately would lead me to the business end of a scalpel.  I was still chasing the number I had in my head since I was a teenager, only now I was 35.  That too would work for a time, and yes I would see the magical number, for a short period of time.

In my quest to be a runner, I would watch my classmates run their six minute miles blowing past my coughing and wheezing obese self.  I wanted it to be easy like it seemed to be for them.   I can recall awakening the morning I was to run the Cooper, that fateful day in junior high.  In our school, that was a fancy name for running a mile and a half on a specific trail around the school.  We did this dreaded task about twice a year.  It proved to be misery for an obese child like me. I was last, sweaty and pretty sure I would never breathe again.  That did not stop me from waking up that morning and just convincing myself that day it would be different.  That day it would easy for me.  I would go and run and ignore the discomfort.  It never ended that way.  I would be a sweaty mess wheezing for the following two days with sore legs and not try again until the next time.

How many times do we take desperation for a number or physcial achievement and do crazy things to get what we want, or ignore the work we actually need to do and try to find a shortcut, just because we have convinced ourselves that if we had that one thing, life would be entirely different. The reality is, our well being does not come from a color like cerulean, a magical fix from a guy in a rusted out van or the shear will to overcome work that has not been done.  As I explained to my client, yes, I finally did reach that number on the scale, but what I learned along the way is it is not that magical number that gives us what it is we are so desperate for.  Our true well being will come more from the process.  I challenged her to put clean things in her body, exercise within the confines of her health issues, and most importantly put the number on the scale away and get a manicure, as those things will feed her soul and provide more satisfaction than any number.  In fact, doing what is best for ourselves amidst frustrating limitations, is likely way more rewarding than any number.

As for me, and my desperation to be a runner....    I have spent three years, with time off for a hip fracture, slowly working.  I began as a walker at 3.6 miles an hour.  Little by little, a day at a time, slowly building.  I had my eye on the chart at Orangetheory.  To be considered officially a runner you had to run at 5.5 mph as a base pace, meaning no slower through the interval blocks.  I had so many fails.   My desperation to be a runner as soon as possible after my hip fracture two years ago, would push me to go too fast, deciding a given day was the day. I was going to do it.  Nope.  I had to walk.  Months of giving in to desperation to be a runner got me not getting anywhere and making no progress to be faster.  I finally broke down and asked my trainer, how was I ever going to get faster.  The answer was tough.  Slow it down.  Build from there.  I had to take the humbling step to see I was not really where I thought I was.  I really wasn't close to being the actual runner just because I could do the 5.5 for short periods of time.  The reality was, I had to slow my base pace to a 5.1 to be able to maintain it and build.  I had to slow it all down and be patient. Once again, they were right.  Put desperation away and start at the bottom.  Today, two months after that advice,  I made it 5.5mph, officially a runner 48 years in the  making.  Learning once again desperation breeds failure, slow positive motion breeds success.   

Did I ever get that 64 pack?  I did.  In 1999, two things happened.  I turned 30 and was working as a nurse finishing my master's degree.  I would take my hard earned money to purchase the 50th Anniversary Edition of the 64 pack.  It came in fancy Christmas tin with an ornament that also was a crayon sharpener, that still hangs on my tree each year.  Somehow the cerulean in that pack was just a little bit brighter than my six year old mind had pictured, and the container would hold a place of prominence in my home for years to come.  Watching my 5 and 3 year old at the time, who had been adopted from Russia almost three years earlier,  after years of infertility, color with those very crayons brought a whole different dimension of satisfaction that would never have been appreciated had I received the crayons at the age of six.  It just goes to show that the things we think we are most immediately desperate for can often turn into something totally different and way more amazing than we ever dreamed.  The best is truly yet to come.