Confidence

          One day I was jogging my short route, feeling pretty good and knowing that I would be able to finish the route without walking.  As I was coming upon the intersection where I cross a busy street and then turn right to continue on to the end of my run I noticed an older man up ahead jogging at an awkward pace.  He was running on the same side of the street as I would be running once I turned.  He looked stiff and slow as he ran.  I wondered how I was going to pass him; should I go onto the street and pass him on his right, or should I pass him on the left and stay on the sidewalk?  I wanted to be encouraging as I passed, because I was always a little dismayed when someone passed me.  Should I say, "Hello" or "Good morning"?  Should I comment on the weather, or my run?  I thought about all of these things as I crossed and started down the street behind him.  As I ran, I watched ahead of me as he increased his distance, becoming smaller and smaller, until I couldn't see him past a curve in the road.

Jogging for Coffee

I like to think about ways to make my runs less stressful and more relaxing.  Here are some ideas that haven't worked out so well for me (you may have better luck):

I save any coins I find along my route and when I've collected $3.85 I'm going to buy myself a latte from Starbuck's as a reward.  I have a coffee mug in my dresser drawer where I've been collecting the coins since I came up with this idea about a year ago.  As of today, I've accumulated 47 cents.

I try to catch up with anyone walking before they change course and leave my route.  The other day I was almost to the corner which marks the end of my run, when I saw a man walking up ahead of me.  He was walking briskly and I had to push myself to catch him.  I was finally at his right shoulder getting ready to pass him when he turned his head to the right and spit.

I used to run early in the morning before work so that I could get it out of the way and feel good for the rest of the day.  In the winter it's still dark outside but there's little traffic and I don't mind running in the rain or the cold.  One morning I was jogging along and tripped over a bump in the road, fell on my face and ended up with two black eyes, a scraped forehead, a bruised lip, and general facial swelling.

Slumping

          I've been pretty excited about the success I've had since I started a jogging routine at the beginning of January.  I was convinced that my new shoes were magic.  By the middle of February and I was able to consistently run my three mile-ish route three days a week, without stopping to walk.  I felt like I would be ready for a 5K at the beginning of summer.
          Then I started having off days.  I couldn't even make it through my short route without walking most of the way.  That had only happened once in January after sharing a bottle of wine with a friend the night before, but this time I couldn't figure out what had gone awry.  After the first bad day, I reminded myself that everyone has off days.  Unfortunately, my next run was also difficult.  Once again, I had to walk much of the way.  After doing so well for almost six weeks, it disappointing.  It kept happening until I'd accumulated five bad runs in a row.  Since I only run three times a week, that's almost two weeks of sloppy jogging.
          I felt like I'd been fooling myself.  I was thinking that I was too old to begin running, and that those last six weeks were a fluke.  I was going to tell my niece that I didn't want to run a 5K after all.  I really wanted to quit and each time I forced myself out on the road, I felt like I was wasting my time.
   Today was a run day and I dreaded it all day long.  When I got home from work I put on my shoes, sweats and a tee shirt and headed out.  My knees began bothering me almost immediately but I tried to stay relaxed and I kept going.  After a couple of blocks, I started to feel better, or at least I wasn't feeling bad and that was encouraging.  I kept going and I did it.  I ran my entire route at a pace I was happy with.  Perhaps I had made it through the slump.
          This Wednesday when I go out for my jog, I might have a good run or I might have a not so good run, but either one is okay.  If it's not so good, I'll remind myself that it happens like that sometimes.  If it's good, I'll enjoy it.  Above all, I will try to remember to take it one jog at a time.

In the Beginning

The hardest thing about jogging is the thing you fall on.  Just kidding.  The hardest thing about jogging is just getting out there.  The second hardest thing is to keep going.  In light of these two obstacles, I have established two guidelines to help me get out and run.

First, I tell myself that I can quit jogging at any time and start walking, or even turn around and go home.  My entire goal is to put on my shoes and hit the pavement.  If I quit, I still celebrate and feel good because I made it through the front door.  Since establishing this goal, I've never deliberately tested it.  Make no mistake, there have been a few times when I've jogged a couple of blocks and felt like I couldn't go any further so I walked home, but I've never quit because I felt like I earned something just by being out there.

Now that running is becoming a habit, I'm working on the second obstacle.  There are a million reasons to stop and walk:  it's windy, I don't feel right, traffic, people are passing me.  My rule is that I have to complete my route.  I can run, jog, walk, or crawl, but I have to stay on my route.  I try to stay relaxed and keep my mind off of my discomfort.  I sing to myself, I practice conjugating Spanish verbs or I try to empty my mind and think about nothing.  If I absolutely have to stop, I ask myself if I can take just five more steps, or if I can make it to that mailbox, or that tree, or lamp post.  Sometimes that helps me get past the temptation to stop and I jog to the end of my route.  Sometimes I don't but then I refer to my first rule which is that I can stop and walk at any time.

These guidelines have helped me run regularly for six consecutive weeks.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it will continue.

Here I go Again

I have been around runners all of my life.  My father and brother were both members of their high school track and cross country teams and my brother continued running throughout his adult life.  My husband was on his high school and college track teams and later participated in the corporate Olympics.  He continues to be a runner today.  One of my sons was a member of his middle school and high school cross country teams.  My other son was a four-year member of his high school cross country team.

In spite of all of this influence, I have never been a runner.  In college my roommate and I decided to go running one night but after a couple of laps around the track across the street we collapsed in our dingy apartment, sweating, coughing and panting, never to attempt it again.  When I was living in San Diego my future husband supported my attempts to become a runner.  In those days, my boss at the bank also encouraged us to run with him after work.  It never lasted more than a few blocks and a couple of months.

In my 30s I ran around the neighborhood for awhile but I was busy having babies and being a mother, as well as a returning college student so I didn't keep it up.  In my 40s I purchased a treadmill and began walking and eventually running in the garage while watching television.  When the treadmill broke, I started running every other day early in the morning before work.  Throughout my forties and fifties, I ran a few months at a time but would fall out of the habit with any excuse (illness, surgery, the wind).

Now I'm 56 years old and am making one last stab.  I've agreed to run a 5K with my niece this summer.  That agreement, along with my ever tightening pants and the new running shoes I got for Christmas have been sufficient inspiration for me to begin running again.  It's official:  I've run three days a week for the entire month of January 2012.  I'm on my way.

Barbie, Ken and Sex Ed.

          In elementary school I had a best friend named Myrth.  "It means laughter," she told me.  "My big sister's name means beautiful," she added.  Her sister's name was Linda.  Myrth and Linda lived with their parents on Friends Avenue near the downtown area of our community.  I had always wanted Linda and my older sister to become friends too, daydreaming of the tidy arrangement that would make, but they never did.
          One day, Myrth came over to my house for the afternoon and we decided to play with our Barbies.  We played on the grass in our sunny backyard, dressing the dolls in several outfits and fussing with their hair, leaving our Ken and Midge dolls to fend for themselves.  After playing for a while, I suggested that Ken come over to Barbie's house for a sleepover.  Myrth covered her mouth in shock.  "Ken and Barbie can't sleep together!" she gasped and she leaned in closer.  "That's how babies are made," she whispered in my ear.
          Thanks to my older siblings, I'd already had some inkling of how babies were made but this was news.  I didn't know that it could also happen when a couple slept in the same bed.  I was embarrassed at my ignorance and at my inappropriate suggestion, and made Myrth promise that she wouldn't tell anyone.  For the next few years, I thought there were two ways babies were made:  1. man and woman having sex, and 2. man and woman sleeping in the same bed.
          After that sunny afternoon and all through my "health" classes as I learned about human sexuality, nothing ever disproved Myrth's theory.  By the end of my freshman year in high school I was determined to find out the truth.  As much as I didn't want to, I knocked on Mom's bedroom door one night and popped the question.  "Do two people have to have sex for a woman to get pregnant, or can a woman get pregnant just by sleeping in the same bed with a man?"  I wanted to make Mom promise not to tell anyone, like I had made Myrth promise all those years ago, but I felt ignorant and embarrassed, and really just wanted to get out of there.
          Mom set me straight and then asked, "Do you have any other questions?"
          Hell no! I was thinking to myself as I left, silently closing the door behind me.

Nativity

          A friend who has been helping me work on my Spanish skills invited me to assist in giving out food "baskets" at her church last Saturday morning.  "They need Spanish speakers," she told me.  "You can practice your Spanish."
          "Will you be there?" I asked her.  My Spanish is functional at best.
          She laughed.  "Yes, I'll be there.  If it gets too uncomfortable for you, just let me know.  It's no big deal and you don't have to stay if it doesn't work out."
          Saturday morning was chilly and damp, but I was glad it wasn't raining.  At 8:00 a.m., dressed in warm layers, I met my friend at the enormous, newly renovated, mission style church.  I followed her to a squat, narrow building separated from the church by a parking lot.  Inside was a room with six long tables, each lined with dozens of cardboard boxes packed with food and toiletries.  Taped to the end of each table was a sheet of paper with a large number written on it.  Families had signed up earlier in the month, and the boxes were prepared according to the size of each family.  People who were receiving the food would show up at their prescribed time, drive through the parking lot and down the alley stopping next to double doors, where their name was checked off a list as a box of food was loaded into their car.
          My friend and I were in charge of the cars entering the parking lot.  We talked to the drivers, putting yellow half sheets of paper on car windshields and asking them to unlock trunks or back car doors, wherever they wanted the food to be placed.  If they didn't have the yellow paper, we asked them to have some form of identification ready.  Then we directed them to drive, a few at a time around the corner and down the alley for their box of food.
          As it turned out there weren't many Spanish speaking families but still it was fun chatting with people as they drove up in their vehicles.  Almost all of the people were friendly and upbeat.  Some were picking up boxes for more than one family and many of those cars were packed with adults and kids.  The people thanked us and most said, "Merry Christmas" or "God bless you."  A half an hour had gone by when my friend pointed to a young couple standing with a blanket covered baby stroller, next to the building.  "There you go, Nancy," she said.  "Time to practice."
          I walked over to them and said, "Hello."  They were both not much more than five feet tall.  The woman's plain round face was pale and her eyes were round and dark.  Strands of her dark hair peeked out from under a blue scarf.  She was wearing a yellow and pink flowered polyester dress under a brown sweater and she had on lime green pants.  She smiled briefly but was quiet.  She rested her hands on the metal bar of the old stroller.  The worn fleece blanket covered whatever was inside.  The man's broad face was smooth and tan, and he had black hair and small dark eyes.  He was wearing jeans and work boots and he kept his hands in the kangaroo pocket of his navy blue Nike hoodie.  He smiled a little.  "¿Habla español?" he asked in a barely audible voice.
          "Un poco," I said.  They stood very still as they responded to my questions with either, "sí" or "no".  In my elementary Spanish I asked if they were there to get a box of food and wanted to know if they had their yellow paper, pointing to the sample I had pinned to my day-glo orange safety vest.  No, they didn't have the yellow paper but yes, they had identification.  They didn't have a car.  I pointed to the side of the building and showed them where they could stand on the sidewalk to join the line of vehicles in the alley waiting to get food.
          As my friend and I continued to greet people and talk to each other I kept glancing at the young family as they inched along the sidewalk next to the cars in the alley, keeping their place in line.  I wondered how long they had lived in the area and how they had found out about the food boxes.  I wondered if they'd had to walk very far that morning.  I wondered about the child who must be sleeping in the stroller.  The church provided one service in Spanish each Sunday so I thought maybe they attended each week.  I felt good that there were places like this where families could get some help and I was glad I was there to be a small part of it.
          More cars arrived and we were kept busy talking to drivers, asking for yellow papers and directing them to the line that curved around the building.  Eventually I noticed the young couple slowly pushing the stroller back through the parking lot toward the street.  They didn't have a box of food with them.  "What happened?" I asked my friend.
          "They hadn't signed up.  Their name wasn't on the list."
          "Oh no," I said.
          "There might be some food left over when we're finished at noon," my friend said.  "Maybe they'll come back."
          I watched the couple walk through the parking lot to the sidewalk.  They stopped and the man sat down on the small stone wall that edged the lawn of the church.  The woman stood facing him, her back straight with her hands on stroller, showing her round sillouette.  For the next twenty minutes or so I kept an eye on the young family.  They stayed there at the end of the driveway; the man sitting and the woman standing, with the stroller between them.  Maybe they were waiting to see if there would be extra food.  Eventually I saw the man stand up and follow the woman as she pushed the stroller off of the grass and onto the sidewalk.  I watched them walk together along the sidewalk until my view was blocked by the huge church.  "There they go," I said to my friend.
          "Maybe they'll come back,"  she said.