Ode To My Training Log

Oh Training Log, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways...

1. You show me that last year's "long swim" is now shorter than my routine one.
2. That over time I run consistently stronger/faster/longer even if from week to week (or even month to month in busy times) it doesn't feel that way.
3. That I weigh less than I have in four years.
4. That, whereas I now consistently run or swim 5x a week, previously I struggled to do more than 3 sessions of aerobic exercise in a week's time (including walking).
5. That I have been more consistent with my yoga practice over the years than I remember.

I have kept an unbroken training log for over three years now, marking down my weight, workouts, migraines, and menstrual cycle, along with notes about how illness, travel, weather, holidays or work kept me from working out (those don't stop migraines or my period, sadly). At various points I have also kept track of my attempts at regular meditation or efforts to cut back on sweets (both mostly failed), along with various other things that now I can't remember, my notes being too cryptic to decipher. Maybe caffeine consumption?

My log shows me when I was first pregnant, when I first thought there was something wrong with that pregnancy, and when I had that fear confirmed. It also shows me when I was pregnant again, when pre-labor started, and then, a week later, proper labor, and then two days later, finally, Buddy.

I've experimented with format, I've tinkered with the size, and who knows if the current form of my log will continue to meet my recording needs. No matter. I'll come up with something new and continue to be grateful.

"I love thee to the depth and breadth and height / My soul can reach..." (Elizabeth Barrett Browning).

Yoga for Lent

Well, it's Lent, and this year my Lenten observation is to practice yoga everyday. It's pretty much the only regular time in my life that I set aside for quiet and meditation, so when I was thinking about how to observe Lent, it just made the most sense to do so through deepening my yoga practice.

So, even if it's only for 5 minutes in a given day, I will take some time each day to practice, and I may use the opportunity to try some of the more meditative practices that I don't usually take time for. I'm curious to see what the effect will be in my life. "Surrender" is the word that keeps coming to me.

Some passages from "The Athlete's Guide to Yoga" by Sage Rountree, the reference I use most often.

"The philosophy of awareness is what makes "doing yoga" more than merely stretching or gymnastics. Just as workouts become training sessions when you are working toward a goal race, practicing poses or sitting still becomes yoga when you are doing it with a purpose." (p.12)

"Hatha yoga uses the tantric approach, which focuses on accessing the universal consciousness through the body. Instead of being something to be denied and transcended, the body is the vehicle for self-realization. Thus the self-improvements that are a secondary benefit of yoga and of endurance sports help bring us toward the ultimate goal of connection with the [divine]. (p.13)

So far, I'm four for four. Forty-two days to go.

Maybe Not This Year

So, just in case you were wondering, it seems that toddlers make museum guards very nervous. We went to the Art Institute yesterday with Buddy to check out their new Modern wing but didn't end up staying long... at least once in every room we had a guard say something to us, always something way obvious like, "Don't let him touch the art." You think? And we weren't allowed to carry him on our shoulders, either, not even in the hallways where there wasn't any art, which just didn't make any sense to me. You'd think he (and the art) would be safest with him on our shoulders.

It was a real shame, too, because Buddy was clearly digging what he was seeing, pointing and saying "dis?" which is what he says when he's interested in something, and chattering away unintelligibly when a particular piece meant something more to him. So it hurt to see how unwelcome we were. I'm sure it would have been fine with them if he were in the stroller but he wouldn't have enjoyed it or been able to see the art which is of course hung at grown-up levels. And we weren't all that impressed with the "family" areas.

So I guess we'll just look for other opportunities to get him cultured, and try coming back in a few years. At least at home he can touch my paintings as much as he wants.

Run Run Run Run

Nope, that's not what I've been up to (ankle still not okay), that's what Buddy did on his very first trip to the Field Museum last month! That and press every button he could reach, regardless of whether or not he could see the results from pressing them. He's usually quiet around strangers but apparently not when there are buttons involved - he was shoving the big kids away to get to them. Luckily he's still small enough and cute enough to get away with that.

Then we went into the older sections, the Northwest Coast and Plains Indians displays, which were two of my favorites as a kid. No buttons to push here, since they haven't yet been modernized and made all interactive, just quiet, low-lit displays of clothing and weapons and sacred objects and all the usual stuff you think of belonging in a natural history museum. Buddy loved this too. He would run in his special penguin fashion (chest forward, arms somewhat back) full steam ahead - until suddenly he would stop before a case and look inside it intently. Until he was off again. Then he discovered the free-standing cases and the opportunities they offered for running around, and around, and around, giggling madly whenever I anticipated him and caught him by going in the opposite direction.

I love going to museums and had been wondering what it would be like for me when we started going to them with Buddy, since right now (and for many years) he'll dictate the pace of our visit. So now I know - it's awesome. I loved watching him enjoy himself and feel so at home, I loved looking to see what was catching his attention. It helped that we tag-teamed, The Dude and I, switching off on who would be the one to follow behind Buddy and who would push the stroller with all our stuff. That way we both still got some chance to look at the displays ourselves.

So I am looking forward to future trips to cultural institutions - I think the Art Institute may be the next stop.

(Plus, at the Field Museum, there's now a Corner Bakery on the first floor instead of the crappy stuff they used to offer for food. Really, how could it get better?)

Gotta Love Those Dishpan Hands

No, I haven't been writing. I've been washing dishes instead.

It's been cold here, which would be fine if our apartment weren't so dang cold, and if my office weren't so dang cold, and if our dishwasher didn't freeze when it gets this cold. So, I've been washing dishes, once, twice, even three times on the days when we're home all day using those dang dishes.

I don't mind when it's cold outside. It's supposed to be cold outside. I get very cranky when it's cold inside. Cranky and slo-o-ow-moving. Way too slow to actually do anything (aside from, maybe, washing dishes).

Oh, and something's not right with my ankle, so I'm not running right now. Swimming, yes, which I also love dearly, but it's not the same at all. I don't want to whine too much in this post so I will just leave this topic for now.

Pretty much all I want to do is work on my quilt. Or read about quilting. Any quilters out there? At least I'm getting somewhere on one of my New Year's resolutions.

I can't think of any clever way to end this post so I will just say, it could be worse. It could be colder.

New Year's Review

Prior to Buddy's birth, I was always wondering, to borrow the title of Po Bronson's book, "What Should I Do With My Life?" (I even posted study questions from that book earlier this year.)

It’s a question that just doesn’t seem that important to me right now. The urgency around it has left. And I am so grateful. I have spent more than enough time in my life agonizing over it.

I’d heard it said that having a child focuses you, puts things into perspective. Leaving aside the whole mess of how one's life and priorities change with having a child in the first place, it also becomes a lot easier to answer the question “What is most important to me?” when my resources outside of child-rearing become more limited, and I have to scrounge for every available bit of time/space/money/energy. "What is most important to me" is whatever I feel I have to do to feel most wholly myself (and thereby also most available to my chosen commitments of child, mate, and work).

Who knows why this seemed so impossible for me to figure out in the past? I could speculate for pages but would only end up boring myself and any others foolish enough to stick along.

In any case, this year I was granted a respite from the grinding questions of WHY is this important HOW is this meaningful WHAT will this mean for my life, and could, in little morsels of space for myself, just do, and be, as I most wanted.

(I think also my sheer animal pleasure in Buddy helped open that space for me. I am happiest in a kinesthetic rather than analytic mode anyway, but it’s very easy to let monkey mind take over in everyday life. Having Buddy around moves me more easily into my body.)

And at the end of the year, what turned out to be most important to me outside of Buddy? Spending time with The Dude. Spending some time every day in purposeful movement. Connecting and reconnecting with friends. Making things with my hands again. Being of help at work.

I realize that the two questions I bring up, “What should I do with my life?” and “What is most important to me?”, are not the same. There is an urgency, a pressure, to the first one, that to me relates to other questions about vocation, about having a sense of calling or mission, about ambition and feelings of self-worth… I think what I am grateful for at the end of 2009 is that this question is no longer, or not currently at least, the one I feel I need to answer.

Happy New Year Everyone!

Aahhh!

I went for my first run in almost three weeks today and it was glorious. Painful but glorious.

(Painful in an unexpected way - my lower ribcage was all tight! From all the coughing I suppose.)

I've heard a good rule of thumb for deciding whether or not to run while sick: if the trouble is above the neck, go for it, if the trouble is below the neck, take care. My troubles have finally moved to and above my neck so I decided to go for it. I actually started yesterday - with the cold/snowy weather we've switched to using the Green Monster to take Buster to daycare, which is the same stroller we use when running with him. It was so cold yesterday I started jogging a bit with him just to keep warm, and lo and behold, I didn't fall over in a coughing fit (at least not until I stopped). Plus I am finally sleeping more like a healthy person and therefore waking up early enough to consider exercising before work.

So last night I laid out my best winter running outfit, set my alarm, stayed up too late and got woken up early by Buster (par for the course), switched my running outfit completely around (also par for the course), dropped him off and went for a little run. Only 20 minutes to start with but a girl's got to be smart about these things. Then back home for oatmeal, hot chocolate, yoga, and a hot shower. Heavenly.

I am so grateful to be feeling mostly normal again.