Good for the soul

Readers, and most especially fellow runners, I have a confession to make. I fear it will alienate me from the majority of you, that it will instantly place me in the category of Not One Of Us. It may confuse and bewilder you. It may even anger you. But it's been weighing on me and I've got to say it. I can't live a lie, people. I need to tell you what's in my heart.

Here it is: I prefer running on the treadmill to running anywhere else.

Oh, I know. I'm a freak. Demented. Perverted, even. But it's true.

To illustrate why I operate outside the confines of human decency in this regard, let me share with you my inner monologue under four different running situations.

Trail Running
Geez, this trail is hilly.
What does that sign say? A WILDCAT has been spotted on the trail?! OH HELL NO.
Was that a wildcat? Probably not.
Wait, what was that? Was THAT a wildcat? I think it might have been.
What are you supposed to do in a wildcat attack, anyway?
I should have brought some mace.
Ack! Deer poop!
Another hill? Are you kidding me?
Whoa, it got a little washed out here during that last rainstorm.
Hey! Leash your dog, dumbass!
This trail is super uneven. And I think I'm allergic to all these trees.
WILDCAT! Oh, no. Just a squirrel.
Two squirrels!
Probably running from the wildcat.
WTF with this rutted, uneven, washed out trail?!
Aaaand ... there goes my knee. Crap.

Street/Sidewalk Running
Do I look stupid?
Holy crap, it's humid out here. And hot. Super hot.
This is seriously some serious humidity.
Seriously.
It's like running through soup. Really hot soup.
Do I look stupid?
OMG, I think I just swallowed a bug.
Does that car see me? Because it's kind of swerving my way.
Hey! Cars drive on the road, not the sidewalk, idiot!
OMG, it's so hot. Soooo hot. And humid. This is ridiculous.
I'm way too tired to run up this hill but I don't want all these people to see me walking.
And I have to pee. Really really bad.
How far is it back to home now?
What the heck was I thinking taking this route?
Do I know anyone who lives over here? Will they let me use their bathroom?
Just swallowed another bug. AWESOME.
Gottapee gottapee gottapee gottapee OMG gottapee.
Do I look stupid?
I'm pretty sure I look stupid.
And OMG, THE HUMIDITY.
I'm going to pee my pants.

Track Running
This is the most boring freaking thing I've ever done.
How many laps was that?
I should run clockwise, just to freak people out.
I can no longer make right turns. Ever. In my life.
I'll be listing to the left whenever I walk now.
This is the most boring freaking thing I've ever done.
How many laps was that?
This is the most boring freaking thing I've ever done.
How many laps was that?
This is the most boring freaking thing I've ever done.
How many laps was that?
(Repeat. Forever.)

Treadmill Run
Alrighty, blinds open, ceiling fan on, mp3 player fired up, let's do this!
Ha! Look at those poor bastards running in the park in 90-degree temps and 98% humidity!
Suck it, losers!
OMG, I love this song. Kicking it up to a 6.
Woo! That felt amazing!
Oops, pee break.
Okay, back now.
OMG, I love this song, too!
Working up a sweat now. I'll turn on the treadmill fan.
Aaaah. Nice.
Another awesome song! Reminds me of hanging out at the lake that one summer.
That was a fun summer. I can still smell the Coppertone and mesquite and taste the grilled burgers and Hawaiian shaved ice.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzen.
(Remainder of run is carried out in a mindless endorphin haze.)

So yeah. I love the treadmill. I love it the way I love Lindor truffles, dirty vodka martinis, Billy the Exterminator and my new running shoes.

The treadmill is the only place I can get my mind right, without any outside distractions.

(Plus I'm antisocial. And a control freak.)

I hope we can still be friends, but I'll understand if none of you can be seen talking to me in public anymore.

Heh.

Walking the dog

I took this dog for a walk today.

It was a long walk. Really long. Like, 2.41 miles long.

That's pretty long when you're only 7 months old. (Okay, fine, 7.5 months old. STILL.)

Did I ever tell the story of how we came to own a standard poodle? My kids are seriously allergic to dogs, but daughter H and the husband really wanted one. They finally wore me down sometime last year and I agreed to get a dog, but for obvious reasons, it had to be a hypoallergenic breed. After some research, we narrowed our choices down to a schnauzer or a poodle.

But I had a further requirement (and I felt like the family owed that to me, since I finally agreed to get a dog and all): I wanted a dog that would be big enough to run with me.

There are large schnauzers, yes. But I wanted a REALLY big dog. And a schnauzer just didn't feel like a good fit for our family. So, a standard poodle it was.

Mister Awful Adorable is getting pretty big now. I'm allowed to start running with him when he's a year old, so to prepare him for that, I've been walking him quite a bit and working with him on matching my pace. He is doing SO GREAT on the leash. Like, amazingly great, when you consider he's still a puppy. (Our awesome trainers get the credit for that. They have worked miracles with this dog.)

He doesn't lunge or pull my arm off. He doesn't pee on every vertical object we pass. He doesn't bark at anyone or anything, not even the dogs behind the fences who bark their freaking rottweiler heads off when we walk by. He does tend to hesitate a bit when someone is walking toward us on the same side of the street, and he's a little freaked out by kids on bikes (he's used to strollers, though). He pays no attention whatsoever to the cars. He mostly stays right by my left side, or just a step ahead of me, trotting happily along.

For the first mile and three-quarters, anyway.

Then he got tired. He just wanted to sit down. I'm sure he would have been happy if I'd carried him, but hello, he is 50+ pounds now. That was not going to happen. So he'd sit, and I'd pet him, and then I'd make him get up and walk a little more (which he did, gamely). Rinse, repeat. For .66 miles along a busy street. It began to feel like some sort of twisted doggy death march after a while. I was pretty sure the poodle rescue people were going to pull up any minute, take him away, and give him to a nice, sane family that doesn't exercise.

But as soon as we turned the corner onto our street he rallied and dragged me the rest of the way home. Then he drank a gallon of water, peed a gallon of pee, and took a nap on the nice cool tile in our entryway.

I was a little worried I had overworked his hips, but after his nap he was 100% fine and has been bounding up and down the stairs and jumping around like a maniac (in other words, acting completely normal)(for him). There's a chance I may have given him a whopping case of Stockholm Syndrome, because while he is usually glued to the husband's side, today he hasn't left mine. And he's been extra cuddly and affectionate, which I don't mind at all.

Still, I think we'll keep our walks a little shorter for a while and work our way SLOWLY up to 2+ miles.

He's still just a baby, after all. Even if he is the size of a Volkswagen.

A playlist for the slow

Last night daughter H and I were watching The Biggest Loser and one of the contestants was running on the treadmill and complaining about how she hates to run. This got H and me talking about how we pink-puffy-heart LOVE to run, and about how we should run together sometime (I usually run when the kids are at school) and how she is so much faster than me so ... that might not work after all.

H: What speed do you run on the treadmill?
K (that's me): Um, usually 4.2 miles per hour.
H: *raised eyebrow* RUN? You RUN at that speed?
K: Well, yeah. For an easy run.
H: *incredulous* What's the fastest you run?
K: I can do a 6 but not for very long.
H: *cackling like the 13-year-old she is* You're kidding! I run at a TEN.
K: Wow. That's pretty fast.
H: You RUN at a 4.2?
K: Yes. FOR AN EASY RUN.
H: What speed do you JOG?!
K: Go clean your room.

People, I am slow. I am a slow, slow runner and I am totally okay with that. I'm 44 years old and I have fibromyalgia -- I think the fact that I'm running AT ALL is pretty awesome, if you don't mind me saying.

I'm not a competitive person by nature. I don't run to win races; I run because I can and because I love it. In fact, the more I give myself permission to be slow, the more I love it. I'm even slower than usual right now because I'm taking this entire year to work on distance rather than speed. I plan to run a 10K in early 2012, so my goal is to work up to that distance however I can -- walking, jogging, running, or any combination thereof -- over the next 12 months.

I know a lot of runners who use their running time to let their minds puzzle over problems and decisions they might be facing. Running gives them the solitude they need to focus on stuff like that and get their thoughts in order. Or if they run with a partner, they have another person to act as a sounding board and give them another perspective on whatever is going on.

I am not one of those runners. Running, for me, lets me turn my brain OFF. Normally my brain is like a methed-up rodent on a wheel. I have a frantic monologue in my head every waking moment -- I spend ALL of my time puzzling over things and trying to sort things out. Running is my escape from that. When I am running along, listening to a song I love, working up a sweat, that recharges my mental and emotional batteries like nothing else. It hits my reset button. It gives me a break from myself and the world around me.

Music is an essential part of that, which brings me to the point of this post. I recently loaded up my mp3 player with songs that have a somewhat slower tempo than the rest of the songs on my running playlist (because as previously mentioned, I'm working on distance right now instead of speed), and boy howdy, that is working out a treat. I am plodding along at a snail's pace and having an absolute BLAST.

So if you are slow like me, or you walk rather than run, or you're fast but need something new-ish for your warmup/cooldown, I implore you to consider the following songs, which are rocking my incredibly slow world right now:

• "She's Got A Hold on Me" by Hacienda
• "Takin' Care of Business" by Bachman Turner Overdrive
• "Orphans" by Beck
• "Down on the Corner" by Creedence Clearwater Revival
• "All This Time" by Heartless Bastards
• "Dare" by Gorillaz
• "I Wish" by Stevie Wonder
• "Road to Nowhere" by Talking Heads
• "Kiss Them for Me" by Siouxsie and the Banshees
• "You Shook Me All Night Long" by AC/DC
• "Train Kept A Rollin'" by Aerosmith
• "Energy" by The Apples In Stereo
• "Fat Bottomed Girls" by Queen
• "Me In Honey" by R.E.M.
• "Whiskey in the Jar" by Thin Lizzy
• "Helter Skelter" by the Beatles
• "Can't Stop" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers

Alrighty. Enjoy!

Because I can

I was halfway through a planned 1.25-mile easy treadmill run this morning. Pandora's Classic Rock station was blaring from my smartphone, and if I recall correctly T. Rex was banging a gong. I was going pretty slow, trying to ignore that weird off-and-on pain in my left knee and the persistent ache in my right foot and the fact that gravity was pressing down unusually hard and it felt like I was running through oatmeal, when suddenly it happened.

First the aches and pains just disappeared, like someone had injected me with the most wondrous fast-acting painkiller known to mankind.

Then the oatmeal melted away, and gravity lifted its curse.

My breathing was completely in sync with the motion of my legs as they carried me forward effortlessly, and I felt -- no, I KNEW -- that I could run forever and ever if I wanted to.

I was flooded with euphoria.

Runner's high! Score!

If you had told me a few years ago that someday I'd call myself a runner, that I would enjoy running, that I would WANT to run, I would have laughed in your face. I hated the running we had to do in gym class when I was in school. It hurt. I was slow. I didn't see the point. Getting from there to here was a loooooong journey (you can read about it over here, if you're so inclined).

All I can tell you is, now that I've got it, I want to keep it. Running has done amazing things for me. It's the best way I've found to manage stress. I'm on a much more even keel emotionally (all month long, ifyouknowwhatImean). I'm sleeping better at night and feeling less fatigued during the day. My blood pressure, which had started creeping up a bit over the past few years, has settled back down to where it was 15 years ago. My cholesterol numbers are fantastic. And perhaps most telling, for me -- the heart murmur (mitral valve prolapse) I've had all my life, which in the past has allowed blood to regurgitate between two chambers in my heart, thus greatly increasing my risk of endocarditis, no longer does that. I still have the murmur and always will unless I get the valve replaced, but I no longer have regurgitation through the valve. Which means my risk of endocarditis has dropped significantly. That right there is what you call life-changing. Or life-extending, anyway.

Of course, I don't know for sure that running caused all these changes, but it's pretty obvious it hasn't HURT. And it's not like I'm an elite runner with 1% body fat who runs ultramarathons every weekend. I've been running an average of maybe 4 to 7 miles a week for the past year. And I run them SLOWLY. Like, really slowly. You could probably walk faster than I run.

There was a marathon here in Austin today. Do I wish I had been out there running it? Nope. Hello, those things are 26.2 miles long! That is a LOT of running to do all at once, and I have no plans to join those ranks anytime soon (someday, maybe ... but not soon). I absolutely applaud everyone who did run it, and I hope they all had a fantastic time and achieved their goals.

Me? I'm happy with my 1.25-mile slow treadmill run. I hit my runner's high and finished exhausted and happy, and every time that happens it reminds me of the real reason I do it.

Because I love it. Oh, I do. I really really do.