When I first started this writing space and was trying on different names for what ultimately became Midlife Run, I struggled. Solidly in my forties, the idea of attaching the word “midlife” to anything seemed like an unwelcome, uncomfortable stretch reserved for the after-fifty set. But I settled into the name, comforted by the knowledge that I was on the “early side” of midlife. Not so any more. Last month we dropped our youngest at college thus marking the beginning of the “empty nester years” and today, as I start to write this, I turn fifty. I am solidly, undeniably, in midlife.
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New Year's Resolution: Do One Thing
I have a shrink-wrapped cork board leaning against the wall to the right of my desk, clearly within view. It’s been standing sentinel in the same spot for months, waiting for me to deal with it and daring me to get on with it already. Its purpose is to be a vision board of sort, a place for me organize my goals, to lay them out in a way that my left-leaning brain can process and check them off, mixed together with other bits designed to spark my still developing right-brain to creativity. I look at that cork board regularly with the same dread that someone with writer’s block stares at a blinking curser on a blank screen.
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That Family Place
When my Dad was young, the annual family pilgrimage took them to Lake Tahoe during the summer, where his family would stay in a small cabin on the north shore, the boys would catch crawdads between the boulders jutting out from the Lake, and skip smooth, flat rocks over the water’s surface. I know these things because when my parents took my brother and me to the same lake shore, and years later after the next generation joined us, my parents would tell the stories. The connection to Lake Tahoe is now four generations deep, and with every new year and new family member or friend who joins us, the memories deepen and years of family stories from this special place transform into epic lore.
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CIM Training (Week 11): Run Hard, Fall Down, Get Up, Keep Going
The boys in my life – husband, son, brother – take great and reoccurring joy in giving me grief about my fear of falling. Skiing? Bring on the bunny hill, snow plow, “ski like a mom” standup routine. Running in the dark? “I don’t know what you’re afraid of – just pick up your feet.” I have heard every version, and at this point I basically tune it out, but the last round made me pause. My son looked at me from across the kitchen island with all of the sincerity a 16-year old can muster and came out with this: “You know, Mom, if you don’t fall down once in a while, you just aren’t running hard enough.”
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What Do You Need?
When was the last time you asked yourself what you need? Not what’s for dinner or what emails have to be answered for work or what you need to do to make sure that everyone else around you is well tended and taken care of. This question is simply about you. If the rest of the world and responsibilities fell away just for a minute - or an hour - where would your spirit pull you? What, would it feel like to do exactly whatever it is that tugs at your heart in that moment. What is that? Is it a moment alone to sit in stillness? Is it a guilt-free run on a trail? Is it reading (or writing) a book? Tending your garden? Dinner out with friends or family? A nap?
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Letting Go of "Perfection"
When my daughter was a toddler and we were zipping around town running errands, I had a habit of listening to a talk radio show host whose platform centered on giving advice about marriage, parenting, and general adulting. She was conservative but she sounded authoritative and was entertaining, and as a 20-something year old first time mom trying to adjust and seeking to be the-very-best-I-could-be, I listened to her religiously. Then one day, she came out with this little gem: Your house always should be “company ready”. Two working parents, a small house, and a toddler with enough toys to open a pre-school, sure, that was going to happen.
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Photo credit: Jess Baranard
Getting Wilder
How do you describe four days in Oregon that redefined how you want to live and transformed your personal aspirations? Four days coached by the incomparable runner-writer Lauren Fleshman and mentored by the equally incredible writer-runner Marianne Elliott? Four days in the company of more than 30 strong and engaged women who arrived with a total commitment to the practice of running and writing and seeking deeper understanding? Someone, please tell me how, because more than a week later, I still am staring at a blank page trying to find a way to describe the experience and how much this group of runner-writer sisters have come to mean to me.
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Redefining Success and Failure
I do not take on challenges lightly. A risk-adverse planner by nature, I don't set goals I don't think I can meet. I don't make arguments I do not think I can win. I don't ski down a hill so steep I might fall. And I sure as hell don’t sign up for a race I don’t think I can finish. This life approach is entrenched with the need for safety and surety, knowing that I can and do push myself but only so far. Generally, I have to say it has been a pretty satisfying approach to life. That is, until I start wondering what if …?
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Own It
There are some quotes that just stick with you. For me, right now it is this: “Bringing integrity back to your running means you have to stop worrying about where you should be and own where you are.” (Lauren Fleshman, Compete Training Journal). The thing about a good quote is that it will challenge your thinking and break you out of your status quo. Certainly, this has been the case for me.
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Why This Election Hurts
The dice have been rolled and landed. And somehow, inexplicably, Donald Trump has won the election. And it hurts, to my core. And while this site primary focuses on the positive – and everything that is good about parenting, and running, and life- I would not be doing truth justice if I didn’t comment on the other side of the equation. My life and career is, and has been, largely driven by the need to face down the continued inequalities that exist in this nation. And for each of us that do not belong to the historic privileged-class, we’ve just been dealt a devastating blow.
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Chicago Marathon Race Report, Part I: (The Journey)
For those who know me or know my writing, you understand that, for me, running is equal parts about the sport and about the journey. So while I will write about the race – the course, the spectators, the City, and everything that made the Chicago Marathon such an exceptional event – this is not that post. Because, in my mind, it is impossible to do justice to the race without also acknowledging this: 26.2 miles is a friggin’ long way to go. It is hard. Sunday's race tested me and tested my emotions, and that is exactly what made it so impactful.
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Chicago Marathon Training: Week 14 (Moving from Fear to Strength)
I am (overly) cautious and a worrier by nature. Always have been. With a truly overactive imagination, in any given situation I can come up with a dozen ways that things could go horribly wrong, and then preoccupy myself with thoughts about how best to avert disaster. My family knows this and, my son especially, will exploit it for his own entertainment (“Look Mom – no hands!” … and then watch as my freak out begins and I turn fifty shades of pale.)
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Photo Credit: Megan Ewens
Chicago Marathon Training: Week 8 (Follow the Instruction Manual) (*Sometimes)
I am a list maker and a planner. A habitual rule-follower, most of my life has been spent traveling a straight and narrow path and trying to avoid temptations to stray outside of the lines. While constraining in other contexts, these Type A tendencies have served me particularly well in training. With a well-vetted marathon plan in hand, I plunge ahead with a good deal of confidence that if I check all of the boxes, if I hit all of my runs and paces, then come race day I will be prepared for the task at hand. In week 8 of training, I had every intention of drawing on this compulsive desire (need?) to click off all of the workouts, and to stay entirely on point, to avoid otherwise inevitable vacation detours.
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Photo Credit: Megan Ewens
Finding Your Marathon Pace (OR The Benefits of Slowing Down)
It was a slow start when I returned to running after a years-long hiatus. Literally. A two to three mile run-walk (or, more accurately, walk-jog) left me breathless and struggling to remember why, again, was I doing this? After a few months, the pieces started to come together and while I was by no means fast, at age 44 I was posting life-long personal bests in middle distance races, and I came to view every run as a new opportunity to see whether I could eke out a slightly faster time. That game ended when I started to train for the marathon, and I was instructed to slow down – way down – and to learn to train at my marathon pace.
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The Trail Blazers
It has been fifty years since Bobbi Gibb became the first woman to race the Boston Marathon, unbeknownst to the race organizers who did not realize that a woman covertly made her way to the start. Soon discovered, she shed a heavy sweatshirt and openly finished the race – to the sound of cheers – in a remarkable 3 hours 21 minutes. As she tells her story, the next two years she ran again (sans bib). Sara Mae Berman picked up the baton and ran in 1969, 1970 and 1971 until the Boston Marathon officially opened its race to women in 1972.
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Choosing How We Greet Our Morning
If you call a law firm, generally you will receive one of two greetings – either a generic “Law Offices” or the rattling off of two to six last names of partners in the firm. It is very business like. Always. Well, maybe not always. Several years ago as a young attorney I was asked to reach out to a lawyer with a solo practice in a small town in the Rocky Mountains. Instead of the expected generic greeting, he answered my call with a loud and enthusiastic: “It’s a great day to be alive!”
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Long Runs: A Love Story
Today, my husband celebrates a milestone birthday: 48. What qualifies it as a milestone you may wonder? After more than twenty-four years together, twenty-three of them as a married couple, this is the year that my husband and I officially have celebrated more birthdays together than apart. And that’s something.
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That Extra Mile
After much thought, I have concluded that there are two types of runners. There are those who have to run like they have to breathe. Whether it is 25 degrees and snowing or a sweltering 95 outside, they will figure out a way to get in their miles and beat their bests, motivated by the pure joy they derive from the sport. For them, running is an inseparable part of who they are and, absent injury, it seems to the outside observer that nothing will ever hold them back. Then there is a second class of runners who, for want of a better metaphor, need a carrot (or the promise of guilt-free chocolate) to entice them out the door.
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The Quest for Balance
This country (or maybe it’s just California?) remains in the midst of this weird love affair with yoga. Yoga supposedly is transformative, and (if you believe the hype) will re-shape your body, mind, and entire outlook on life. I want to like yoga, I really do … but every time I try it I come away underwhelmed.
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A New Year: Time to Let Go of All that Was Left Undone in the Last
By almost any account, this is a time to look ahead toward a year that is shiny and new, full of promise and expectation, with yet-unbroken resolutions. But before I bound ahead into 2016, I feel compelled to look back, with some degree of guilt, about items that did not get checked off in 2015.
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