Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans

And this is especially true when you're a mom.

 The past three runs I had planned for, my boys ended up having a swim meet on each one of those race days. Soooooo, plans went by the wayside, running was dismal and half hearted and here I sit having my long runs at 6 miles.

 My oldest son has been such an incredible inspiration to me. He decided last summer after watching the summer Olympics, specifically Michael Phelps, that he wanted to try competitive swimming. August 11th will be the one year mark from when he took his first swimming lesson with the head coach of his swim team, to learn all the different strokes, and the weekend after next he will be swimming three different events at the state finals for long course.

 He has worked so hard these past few months after his coach told him not to expect to make state finals for two to three years, and I feel like a big hypocrite when I encourage him to go to practice when he doesn't feel like it yet here I sit, not working towards my own fitness goals, so I told him I was going to start on the marathon plan, whether I run an official race or just do it on my own. His response was the kick in the butt I needed when he said was I going to stick to this one this time, because I had announced a couple times now that I was following a plan and well, I was a big failure! Okay, I added the failure part.

 So yes, I am sticking to this one! I am on week two, a few of the runs have been treadmill runs since we are hovering in the 90's with terrible air quality because of multiple fires burning around the area.

 One big thing I am aiming is losing weight. Running with this extra weight just sucks. My knees are making crunching noises when I go up the stairs, my minutes per mile are two minutes slower than they were before I moved to Montana and gained depression weight, and  quite frankly I feel like crap when I put on my clothes so I determined. Yeah, yeah, I know. Don't try to lose weight while training for a marathon! I have been reading up on nutrition and am doing better energy wise and so far I am feeling good. If I start to feel drained I will change things up.

 So there it is, one week down, 17 to go!!

When it's your long run day but you're just too damn busy

 Week six of my training plan to my June 10th 30K actually became a repeat of week five because of the week from hell that resulted in a horse to the vet and a $1,000 plumbing disaster, so I had to do a re-do.

 The smaller runs were easy to do on the treadmill when the kids were at swimming and karate, my youngest son decided to start running with me this past week, too. Yah!

 The ten mile run was going to be a struggle. Montana weather is still winter, and being that we are on the prairie, finding a day that isn't blowing a stampede of tumbleweeds across endless miles of nothingness is a rarity but I tried it outside nonetheless.

 Two miles was all I managed. It was like running in mud up to my knees. My son was struggling to pedal his bike alongside of me, my chest ached from the cold wind and I bailed.

 Attempt number two at getting 8 more miles in was done at the gym on a treadmill while my son had a one hour karate class. Five miles accomplished this time but once again had to bail so we could drive into Helena for grocery shopping. I was bound and determined to get my ten miles in, even if it is rather unconventional to do a long run in stages, at least mentally I would feel accomplished!

 After dinner, we headed out to the OTHER gym we have a membership at and I ran as fast as my lungs and achy legs could handle. Week five complete, 10 miles down.

 The treadmill miles this week owe many thanks to the Ginger Runner to sidetrack me from the endless miles of boredom.

A goal! Yes, I finally have a race!

So I finally bit the bullet and chose a race. I told my husband I was going to make the depressing assumption that we were still going to be here this summer and his response was something along the lines of "I hope not but you might want to prepare yourself for the fact that we may be." So I found a race far away from the flat, color of dirt, landscape that we live in and selected the
St. Regis Trail Rail Run in June in St. Regis, Montana.

 Since it is about a four drive, I felt like driving all that way I should at least make it a worthwhile run and with four full months to prepare, the 30k seemed attainable. I was, after all, able to drag my sad self over the finish line of a half marathon. What's six more miles?

 I printed out the Hal Higdon Novice marathon training plan and tweaked it a bit with the mileage. I absolutely don't want to repeat how I trained for the half marathon in August by not running the race distance before the actual race. The farthest distance on the half marathon plan was ten miles and the last 3 were a killer, so this time around I plan on running 18 miles before the actual race.

 Week one called for three days of 3 mile runs with a jump to 6 miles on the long run day. Yeah, I told myself, probably not happening. I haven't run 6 miles in two or three months. My son had swim team practice the day of my long run so I had to run on the treadmill. I told myself I could probably make it to 5 miles, and that would be a stretch but once I hit 5 I surprisingly felt pretty good and managed the last mile. Week one of my 30k training was complete!

Trudging along and thinking of goals

The weather here has been unbelievable, as in I can't believe I would ever live in a place this miserable cold. I know, what did I expect moving to Montana? There is a reason only a million people live in the fourth largest state in the union. When Steinbeck wrote that this was the "last best place" (what does that statement even mean?) he had been in Montana for a total of 56 hours and primarily stuck to the Yellowstone area so trust me, it is not an honest assessment since he never bothered to factor in the weather!

 At one point, the temperature gauge on the truck read -35 and the snow pile up, even on the more bearable days, was too much to get outdoor runs in. With the two year mark coming up in March, officially releasing my husband of any obligation of having to pay back the money the company spent to move us here, he can officially look for employment elsewhere! It's really the only thing keeping my spirits up in this winter of misery.

 I am a miserable treadmill runner. The most I managed to force myself to run was five miles. I look at guys running next to me, their mileage at 8, and I am in awe. Even with a t.v in
front of me, I am way too bored to run any further.

 My oldest son joined the swim team last summer and he quickly advanced through the ranks to the team that practices five days a week so it keeps me at the gym at least. I switch my workouts between the bike and the stair stepper when I am not running. I use the machines for leg strengthening exercises but I don't venture out to the rest of the gym with the free weights because it can be rather intimidating. The weight lifters are not the friendliest and really make it known that that is their domain, even if we all are paying the same dang membership, so unless I am with my husband, I avoid that area.

 I need a goal, I definitely work better that way. The trail running schedule is out but a part of me feels like I need to be spending my mental energy towards focusing on NOT being here in a few months and signing up for a race would instead be saying "nope, you will still be here so suck it up!" Yeah, ridiculous. It's been almost two years of learning how to battle the self talk that goes on in my head, a daily struggle to focus on how to make the day pass without crying, getting through the day without thinking about what we would be doing if we were back in Washington. I should just sign up for the training goal and look at it from that perspective only.

 And I should probably cut out the second white chocolate iced  latte I have at home every night. That might be a good goal, too.

The Agony of "It's Just Old Age"

 I think I have talked briefly before about how seeing family age and wither away has been a huge motivator for my running and seeking better overall health as I stare down middle age in the not too distant future. I have also talked about how I seek out stories of seniors that are beating the odds when it comes to avoiding the rust that often sets in when they sit in the chair in their living room, or the front porch. There are so many stories out there when you start looking and paying attention and they are so inspiring! No matter what age you choose to start, as long as you are still breathing, it seems your body and health can improve.

 Researchers that actually study senior citizens and health improvement beyond taking pills are proving this more and more. The unfortunate thing is that studies have been slow to occur in this field because there isn't a whole lot of money in this area but with the ever aging population and the strain that this is going to be on governments that are taking on more and more of these elderly patients with longer life spans due to medical interventions, people are waking up and admitting there needs to be a better way.

 I was a lucky kid in that I grew up in a home with not just one grandma, but two. Starting at the age of six, I lived with both my grandma and my great grandma.

 Looking back to my earliest memory of my great grandma, I see her sitting in her chair. Four different houses over the years and the scene never changes. When she walked, she shuffled from one place to another and I can still hear the sound her slippers made against the wood floors. Her back had what my grandma, her daughter, called the "widow's hump." I have a picture of her from her high school days of her and her girls' baseball team. This sort of shocked me when I first saw it. An image of my grandma as a young woman, running and playing a sport, is hard for me to imagine.
 
 When she died in her late 80's, in a nursing home once she needed 24 hour care, my family was told by the doctor in the nursing home that she was on so many pills she was almost a drug addict, along with suffering from type 2 diabetes.

 I think of her final years, sitting in her chair, watching her t.v programs, waiting for the mail or one of her grandkids to play a card game with her, and I am sad for her.

  Now her daughter, my other grandma, is continuing on her same path. We get into weekly discussions on her aches and pains. She laments to me on how she will need a wheelchair at the airport when she comes to visit us because the distance between the terminals and the security check point are so long.

 She is suffering from arthritis in her shoulders and she is convinced it is from her high school years of twirling baton. She tells me my running will ruin my knees and when I told her I completed a half marathon her response was simply "Oh my god." Her belief is that exercise will eventually lead to pain and bodily damage in the end.

 Nana, I tell her, you have got to move, you have to go for a walk everyday, lift some one pound weights to which she responds, "Oh, honey, this is just old age."

 She won't listen when I talk to her about the research proving that activity is the best treatment for her arthritis, instead she downs Aleve on a daily basis.

 I am not in her doctors' offices with her, so of course I am not sure what they are prescribing for her aches and pains, it is highly possible they are trying to encourage her to get up and move. She has no major injuries or disorders to prevent this, but if they aren't, I really wish they would! 

 I wish we would get past this idea that old age equals lack of ability to move, the necessity for motorize carts at the grocery store and a hurry cane.

 There is a common phrase used among the horse rescue community that "old age doesn't equal skinny!" it is an attempt to dispel the myth that once a horse hits their late teens and into their 20's that being skinny is just part and parcel of being an old horse when in actuality, being underweight does mean is that he most likely has dental issues that need to be taken care of, or an overload of parasites. Sway backs are a symptom of being ridden with the horse in an improper carriage, with a high head, hollowed back and abs not engaged and carrying the horse, again, not a sign of old age.

 I wish that we could make it a campaign to dispel the myth of old age in humans equaling the inability to walk from one end of a shopping mall to the next.

 I don't want my boys to fear old age, I want them to see their mom and dad hiking the Pacific Crest Trail and running ultra marathoners long into their "twilight" years (and while we're at it can we get rid of that phrase, too!)

 Now just to get my husband on the same page.

Is Strong Really The New Skinny?

 I was on the stair climber yesterday, that mind numbing machine that tries to inspire you to climb higher and faster by putting various buildings and monuments around the world. To beat back the boredom I picked up the equally mind numbing magazine, Shape, because of a certain celebrity on the cover that I was interested in reading about.

  As I flipped past page after page of makeup ads and articles on how to get a certain look, how to get an awesome butt, shoulders that look good in strapless dresses, recipes to help you lose weight, all just to get to a two page article on a celebrity that was really only in there to sell her clothing line of "active wear" and swim suits that look like they are best for laying by the pool and not swimming laps or playing at the water park with your kids (these types of suits made very difficult to find by the way,) the saying "strong is the new skinny" popped into my head.

  Years ago, as a newly married 19 year old, I had subscribed to this magazine, and as I look back I realize "strong" was never a word I aspired to. Nor was the idea of living a life of fitness and good health well into my senior years.

 All I wanted to, all I was programmed to want, was to look good. If this meant eating as little as possible to achieve that then I would do it. Exercise was just to get me that look, just like the magazines promised. Do this exercise and you will have the perfect butt, find out what celebrity X does to have those abs. It was just a bombardment of how females needed to LOOK.

  I started to really reflect on this, to wonder why I grew up needing to "look" a certain way (although like the majority of women I never actually did achieve that look.) In my introspection, I recalled all the fashion magazines that filled my childhood home.

 Gaunt, forever 21 and forever hungry, wearing clothes I would never be able to afford, adorned with makeup I would never have the time to apply, were the females that always stared back at me. Subconsciously these images melded into being, convincing me that this is the ideal female, this is who I should be.

 I never tried very hard to live up to this, don't let me fool you into thinking I became a fashionista that never left the house without perfect hair and makeup! Far from it, I actually did more of the opposite, partly due to my 6 foot frame and the difficulty in finding clothes that comfortably fit and partly due to my bank account that could never maintain that sort of a lifestyle, especially once kids came into the picture, but the bigger reasoning was I never felt like I could become that ideal woman in the magazines.

 It was an ideal too hard to attain. Every picture ever taken of me, I analyzed like a scientist searching through strands of DNA. I quickly ascertained that I was not picture material, so I avoided them all together. I ducked away from cameras pointed in my direction every chance I got.

 Fast forward to life with little boys and I knew that no way, no how, would my boys grow up looking at unrealistic images of women. I was thankful for grocery stores that offered "family friendly" aisles that little people wouldn't be eye level with cleavage and magazines entitled "have eye popping sex tonight!"

  I felt vindicated in my thinking on this subject when my oldest was around six years old, after seeing the cover of a magazine with a woman in a short skirt and plunging neckline, as we stood in line at Barnes and Noble, he asked me "why do ladies sometimes dress like they are naked?" I shrugged and said I wasn't sure, but a few years later we discussed how some ladies think that is what makes them pretty and what they think men want to see, and how movies and magazines teach a lot of girls that their worth is in what they look like.

 I am not naive enough to ignore the fact that males are very visual beings and my boys eyes' aren't ever going to be drawn to cleavage and short skirts with bleached hair and overdone makeup, but I do hope they have been brought up to look for healthy and active, like they have been raised, for their future life partners.

 Reading the book "Natural Born Heroes" really brought home the idea that our bodies, both male and female should be healthy and strong, for good purposes. For survival, for war, for the simple facts of enjoying life to its fullest! There is so much world out there to be explored, trails to be run (or walked) national parks to be explored, even if you aren't an outdoors person, museums and malls with miles of stores and art are there to be enjoyed and walked.

  I don't believe we are doing an adequate enough job of changing the narrative for our young people to strong is, and SHOULD be, the new skinny. I think we're getting closer, with the sudden explosion in spartan races and other types of events like tough mudder, but with as many of those that are gaining in popularity, Kardashian type lifestyles are gaining followers by the millions on instagram. How to get the "thigh gap," overinflated lips, and oddly shaped derrières are still a hot topic in magazines that target young women. Young men are still being bombarded with six pack abs and biceps really not serving any purpose other than to flex in the mirror while posing for a selfie, as the ideal man.

 We need to impress upon our young people that having a healthy body that can get us from point A to point B, should be our goal. Filling our vehicle (our bodies) with foods to adequately fuel us and keep us healthy. Finding role models, both real life and those in the spotlight.

  For my sons, their karate instructor who is almost 80 years old, still strong and nimble and still working at his landscaping job as well as teaching martial arts several times a week, is someone I point them to when we talk about a long life of fitness and health. Michael Phelps, an idol of my son that swims competitively, is an example of a strong, healthy body that is utilitarian, not just chiseled to grace the cover of a magazine.

 For myself, I look to people well into their 70's and even in their 80's, still running marathons and Iron Man races. Even 100 mile ultra runs. Our bodies are amazing works of art, given to us to enjoy life to its fullest, climbing mountains, swimming oceans, biking through countrysides or exploring city streets. They is so much more to living than looking good in a selfie in clothes made for mannequins! The only way to get this message across to our kids is to really get serious about teaching them that strong and healthy, not skinny, is a lifelong endeavor.

 It's definitely the message I wish I had learned long ago.

Running Partners

First of all, if anyone actually reads my blog I apologize for what a mess it is. I used to blog all the time a few years ago but blogger has changed, my laptop is old and slow so I typically write posts on my phone and I have yet to figure out how to post pictures. It let me post a couple and then not again so hopefully I will figure that out soon enough. I hate reading blogs without pics, so I know how boring that is. Running on the prairie is not all that scenic but once in awhile I manage to snag a deceptive picture to trick people into thinking the place is somewhat scenic. Can anyone tell I want to move back home?

  One thing I didn't really expect when I mentioned my runs on Facebook was that people would actually be inspired to run. I've never seen myself as the type to inspire people so this was kind of a surprise.

  I told everyone that mentioned it that I was happy to run with them if they wanted to get together and one friend finally took me up on it. She needed to meet pretty early, when it was still dark! But I went ahead and got my butt out of bed anyway. By our second run together, our sons had joined us!

  One big positive that has come from our move is the amount exercise all of the family is getting now. My oldest son and running partner has joined the swim team and doing incredibly well, my youngest has taken up martial arts and bikes or walks every day with his dad to hatch Pokémon eggs and I have goaded my husband into running again so he is following a Hal Higdon 5K training plan.

  Exercise is so good for everyone, our bodies were created to move, after all! So I am overjoyed that I might be the kick in the pants someone might need to get moving and get healthy. I keep telling everyone that last year I couldn't even make it to the end of our gravel road which is just about a quarter of a mile and now I can run a half marathon (albeit slowly!) so if I can do it, anyone can do it!