Circle of Care
My friend Erica is a grief counselor for children. A heart-wrenching job, for sure. You enclose these kids in a circle of care, she says, to help them understand what’s happening to them and their world.
When she says circle of care, Erica holds up her arms in front of her for emphasis like she’s holding a laundry basket. Their lives are like a basket filled with things that have become soiled but can be made clean again. Erica’s job is to hold the kids loosely, but firmly, until they’re ready to unload their own basket.
I see this image of Erica with arched arms often when I think of Girls on the Run. Most recently at last weekend’s race.
On the way to the race, the SUV I was driving, loaded with nearly everything we needed for race day, was forced off the highway and into a cement wall, totaling the car. It was my mom’s SUV. She was my passenger. Miraculously, we are both fine.
Everything that was loaded into the SUV in an orderly, organized fashion suddenly looked like tornado debris. Somehow, with the help of my great friend Chris who showed up within minutes of being called, we were able to transport the race gear to the park in time for the run.
Each girl who participates in Girls on the Run receives a medal when she finishes the race. It’s a mark of accomplishment not only for achieving her race goal but for completing the entire season. 
I love to see the hanger full of medals strung from our tent, each one waiting to be hung around girls’ necks. This season, we arranged the hanger weeks before the event, just so we could look at it.
The medals swayed in the back of the car, streams of blue and pink, and jangled as we drove. When we hit the cement wall, the medals flew off the hanger in every direction and crumpled on the floor.
I picked up all I could find and held them in a ragged mound on my lap as Chris drove us to the park. There was no more order, only wrinkled or dirty ribbons speckled with broken glass. I carried them in my arms, a mangled heap, to our set-up site, still a bit dazed, wondering how to recreate order out of what had become chaos.
It was then I was reminded of Erica. I put the medals down and stepped away. Dozens of others stepped in and did what they were there to do. The tent and tables went up, gear was organized and distributed, girls and buddies signed in, medals re-hung. There was smiling, laughter, nervous anticipation. Clouds of pink hairspray.
And then, girls running. Not alone, but with their buddies.
At the finish line, I watched coaches drape a medal around each girl’s neck, followed quickly by a hug big enough to enclose us all.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )Are You a Loner or a Leaner?
If I fall, I will crush them.
I looked at the circle of girls the head coach assigned me to. Group A. Fitting. There were only 5 of them but they each had an idea of how this game should proceed, and none were reluctant to share.
The day’s Girls on the Run lesson was about community. What it is, how it works, the character traits of those involved in one that is cohesive. The game that introduces the lesson involves trust, a key component in working toward a common goal. We must trust each other if we are to succeed.
Trust. A necessary trait in any community, including the community of runners, though not one I had thought too much about in connection with running.
I have always been a loner, especially as a runner. Running is my time to think, meditate, pray. I need the solitude to plan, dream, vent. As a writer, I need it perhaps most of all—I run rather than sleep on ideas.
The concept of a running community—friends to run with or to make while running—is new to me. Until recently, I had not considered that a running buddy could be fun, beneficial, even necessary. Rather than relying on my own determination or perseverance, enlisting a running buddy—becoming part of a community—would require that I learn to depend on others, that I learn to lean.
Leaning is an integral part of the game that began that day’s lesson. The object is to demonstrate not only that we can be trusted, but that we can trust others. It requires a kind of letting go.
Naturally, I thought, the girls can trust me. Physically I top them by nearly half a person. Their foreheads brush my triceps at best. I would not let them fall.
Nevertheless, as each girl had her turn at trust, one was reluctant to play. My heart wrenched as she stepped back from the circle, setting herself apart. But she had to go, the girls insisted. She was part of their team.
Afraid to close her eyes and let go, she held her body stiff rather than pliable, insisted on control rather than vulnerability. We convinced her to stay with it long enough to relax, let go. Gradually, her muscles released and her eyes closed. The rest of us smiled as we worked together to keep her safe in the circle.
It was a good game, I thought, beginning to break from the circle, happy for the girls’ experience. But wait, the girls squealed, what about you?
I stepped back from the circle, shaking my head.
Don’t you trust us?
If I fall, I thought as I gazed down at the tops of their heads, I will crush you.
Don’t worry, they said. We’ve got you.
So I leaned.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 3 so far )I want to ride my bicycle, I want to ride my bike
It’s springtime in central Texas. The mountain laurel has bloomed, saturating the air with its grape soda smell. Bluebonnets blanket hills and highway medians. We hit a record 95° high last week, only to be followed by nights dipping into the 30s this week. Definitely spring in Texas.
My neighbors are elbow-deep into spring cleaning. There’s pruning and mowing and aerating outside. Carpet cleaning, closet organizing, and decluttering inside. Garage sales blossom like prickly pears.
My spring cleaning isn’t quite like theirs. I dust off only two things: My bicycle and Queen.
Not Queen Elizabeth II, or even Queen Latifah. You know, Queen. You probably recognize the bleacher stomping at most sports events. We Will Rock You. That Queen.
A few days ago, I broke out my bike. Wheeled it out of the garage, pumped up its flat tires, wiped off cobwebs and last year’s tri sticker, oiled and polished it to a sheen.
I haven’t been on it since last year’s tri.
This year’s tri is coming soon enough, and I have a new goal. I need to finish it in better time than last year. I need to make it up the monster bike hill without the momentary standing still on the steepest grade, the rolling slightly backward.
I need to ride. More than that, I want to.
And so Queen will be my closest companion on early Sunday mornings from here on out, Bicycle Race on continuous loop on the iPod in my head.
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride my bike
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride it where I like
Spring cleaning? Nothing to it. Just me and my bike.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Good-Bye No-Plan Plan, Hello (Torture) Structure
After three weeks of aimlessness, I have an official training plan.
Last Sunday I created a 3+ month training schedule and registered for the races I had already selected, one per month:
- March 23 – 10k
- April 6 – 10k
- May 18 – 10K
- June 22 – Sprint tri
What a relief. Sort of.
I kicked off my plan with a day of rest. I needed time to process the whole thing, for starters. Plus it was a Sunday, already late in the afternoon by the time I sat down to figure things out. It was also the first day of Daylight Savings Time, which I still am not adjusted to, and the day after my birthday, a late night to say the least. I actually slept until almost 10 am. A record, I think.
Even though I’m excited to have a plan again, it’s been a tough week of adjustment. I’ve had a hard time waking up at 5ish after three weeks of sleeping until 6 or 7, and an even harder time with daily motivation.
However, I figured out a long time ago that I’m the kind of person who needs the structure of a training plan not only to keep me on the right health track but also to keep me on-task in life. I am so much more productive in all other areas of my life when I can roll out of bed and run.
One more week, and I’ll be fine. It will feel less like torture and more like it should feel—fun.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Confessions of a Chocolate Hoarder
I’m off chocolate. Again. Soon, at least. Probably Sunday.
I have this scary addictive kind of relationship with chocolate. Once I get started, I have a hard time stopping.
It’s not the sugar in it that gets me. It’s the chocolate. I can do without all other kinds of sugary things.
Soda? Never.
Juice? I don’t get it. Why drink a fruit when you can eat it instead?
Cakes, pies, donuts, hard candies, Skittles, licorice, you name it. If it doesn’t contain chocolate, I don’t want it. It’s an easy pass.
Once I’m off chocolate, it’s gone, out of my life. That is, the idea of chocolate—its shadow or form, if you will—may exist in my mind (thanks a lot, Plato), but chocolate disappears from my home and from my physiological desire. I don’t need it anymore.
While I’m on it, however, it changes me. I am not the generous, sure-go-ahead-and-borrow-my-car-for-a-week kind of gal I usually like to be. Not if it involves chocolate.
No, you can’t have a bite of my death by chocolate cake. Slice your own piece.
What do you mean you want one of my Reese’s peanut butter cups? There are only 2. I have none to spare.
Selfish. A chocolate hoarder. That’s what I become. And, yes, please take my car for a week. That leaves me so much more time to sit home with my boxes of Girl Scout cookies and count them into nice, neat stacks. One for me. One for me. Two for me. Two for me. Now that’s my idea of fun.
It’s the getting off chocolate that’s not much fun. It only takes a few days, but during those dog days (even if it’s March), I even dream in chocolate.
So if it does all that, you might ask, why did I get back on?
It’s complicated.
See, there’s Easter, which weasels in to the local stores sooner with every year, and with Easter comes the dread Cadbury Egg. And, of course, it’s Girl Scout cookie season, which may or may not have similarities to deer season. And in between, I have a birthday. What is a birthday if not a day to eat chocolate cake?
But, of course, there is more. I met my running goal. My white-slate refrigerator side is once again empty, and I have no new goal visibly posted. There are goals in my head to get me through November, but until they are written, broken down into their daily tasks, organized into a training calendar, and pinned up in my kitchen, chocolate gets free reign.
So Sunday is the day. The day that daylight savings time begins. The day after my birthday. The day I will do laundry, so that the jeans that have been worn into looseness will tighten back up and cling in ways they were not intended to. I will create my training plans and post them.
Once again, it will be death to chocolate rather than death by chocolate.
Wish me luck.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 4 so far )Who Gave You Permission to Rest?
funny-pics.co
I’ve had what my brain considers to be some very lazy days. The taskmaster part of my brain, that is. The part that creates my schedule, absolutely loves to-do lists, demands focus, and keeps me on-task, in work, sleep, fitness, and even fun.
I hate that part of my brain.
Particularly when my body and the rest of my brain are clamoring for free time. Enough already, they scream, so loudly sometimes they keep me awake at night.
Why can’t I be like normal people and take it easy from time to time? Assuming, of course, that’s what normal people do.
Since I completed a half marathon nearly 2 weeks ago, I have not gone out for a run or in to the gym for strength training. Instead of waking up before the crack of dawn, I have let my body dictate when it wants to rise. I still wake up (briefly) at 5 am, then roll over and promptly go back to sleep. When I do get up, dawn has cracked.
I know that it’s good for me to take a break from routine of any kind. It helps me to come back fresh, strong, whether I’m training for an event or tackling a work project head-on. Mental and physical breaks are a necessity, at least for me.
Plus, it’s not like I’ve done nothing. I’ve gone to a few Pilates classes, done some Yoga. I’ve focused on stretching and have resumed the daily core work my body needs. I’ve started a new work project and tied up some loose ends. I’ve even set a date to begin whatever it is I’m supposed to begin: March 1. A nice, round number.
So why does the OCD part of my brain keep picking on me?
Wednesday morning I caught myself staring uncomfortably at my refrigerator. No, I was not trying to invoke any x-ray vision gifts I might have miraculously been given by trying to see the stacks of Girl Scout cookies in my freezer. I already broke into those. Rather, I was noticing what was posted on the side. My half marathon training schedule, all penciled in. My race bib and finisher’s medal. A race bib and 2nd place medal from a mid-training race.
I took them down and put them away, leaving an empty white space in their stead. My OCD-brain breathed a sigh of relief. Order restored. A clean, white slate waiting to be filled. The fist between my shoulder blades unclenched.
There is promise ahead. But first, at last, there is rest.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )The Blank Page
The page is almost full. Next Sunday–in 9 days–I will be in Austin well before the sun comes up, running a half marathon, the first I have been able to run since February 2010. At the end of the day, my last box will be checked.
When I posted my training plan on the side of my refrigerator just before Thanksgiving, the whiteness of the blank boxes and the progression of long-run miles daunted me. For a couple of weeks, I doubted I could actually do it. Run a half marathon, geez. What was I thinking? I hadn’t run that far in so long I found it hard to have faith in my ability to do it again.
Not only was the page too white, but there were lots of things that might get in the way of fulfilling my plan. Christmas, New Years, vacation, business trip, work. I had to remind myself that the holidays in particular were why I chose to run this particular half marathon at this particular time, why I chose to start training the week after Thanksgiving. I chose.
I knew from past experience how closely aligned race training is with project planning. Life planning. You set a goal and a date, break it down into its parts, plant the tasks on a calendar, and check off each task as it’s complete, recording your rate of success. Focusing on the small chunks, one week at a time at most, one day at a time for certain, is what determines success. We only live one day at a time. It’s our responsibility to focus on the moment, perform to the best of our ability, because the moment is all we are guaranteed.
But for the past couple of weeks, I’ve been looking at my plan with a different eye. When I glance at it from across the kitchen, I no longer see an intimidating white page. My plan has almost reached fruition. The boxes contain times and distances where I followed the plan, or diagonal lines where I didn’t. I am no longer afraid of this page. Rather, I am proud. I have come so far, and there is visual proof to remind me.
When I look at my plan, penciled, erased, circled, used, I get excited. Not only am I so close to reaching my goal, which is thrilling in itself, but I have had the joy (and pain) of reaching a goal every day. I see the results on paper, certainly, but also in the mirror. I am not the same person who started this plan on November 26. And I will be a different person again when I cross that finish line on February 17.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 3 so far )Oh, to Run and Change the World
What would you say to someone who told you that running could change the world? Would you think they were odd, crazy, dreaming? Not my world, you might think. Not the real world, where businesses and people work hard to make a living, get ahead. Running, you might say, is a hobby for most, a pastime, an amateur sport. It might be fun, might get or keep you healthy, but surely it couldn’t change the world.
I had the privilege this week of attending the 10th annual Girls on the Run International Summit, a conference, for lack of a better word, though it was like no conference I’ve attended. It may have had all the trappings of your average conference—speakers, general and breakout sessions, meals and parties—but this conference was distinctly different. What made it so was not the agenda, it’s the organization—the men and women who are Girls on the Run.
Every organization composes a Vision, a Mission, a set of Core Values it displays for all its stakeholders to see. Most include words like customer-oriented, integrity, honesty, excellence.
What about words like positivity, gratitude, empowerment, responsibility. Empathy, joy, love. And more telling than words, what about actions? Could a business be built on a foundation that includes empathy, joy, and love?
When Girls on the Run started, it was led by one woman who brought together one team of thirteen young girls to instill in them confidence, joy, self-respect, to show them their own strength and where it could lead them. Sixteen years later, Girls on the Run is led by 55,000+ women and men across the nation in 208 councils, revealing to tens of thousands of girls their full potential.
Girls in the program learn to be authentic, strong, honest. To respect themselves and others, to make healthy life choices, to be empathetic. These girls will grow up to be leaders in business, education, government. They are learning to lead with love.
The tool that does this? Running.
Sound corny? Far from it. It’s quite real, and part of a movement to bring empathy, responsibility to bear on our actions, in business, education, government.
Who said that running couldn’t change the world? It already has.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )Half Way to Austin
I’m over the hump. This is week 7 of the 12 week training plan I’m following to get to the Austin Half Marathon on February 17.
Training for a half marathon was not one of my 2012 goals. It hadn’t even crossed my mind. I’ve completed 9 half marathons, but an injury in 2010 sidelined me, and until this past summer I hadn’t run farther than 6 miles. And I’d only done that once.
In September, I realized it was time. What was the deciding factor? There were a few. Competing in a 5-miler next to a friend reminded me of the fun, social side of running. Winter was approaching. I’m convinced that I have bear blood in me. Once the thermometer dips below, say, 40, all I want to do is curl up in a ball under a pile of blankets with a bag of Julio’s and a plate of cookies. Now that’s hibernation. And the holidays make it worse. Maybe I’m part slug, part bear. I didn’t want a repeat of last year’s near-comatose holiday season.
But the overwhelming reason was simple. I was tired of being afraid. Of injury. Of failing. Of facing the possibility that I could no longer run distance. I finally realized that if I didn’t try, I had already failed, and I would never run farther than 6 miles, period.
And here I am, ending week 7. It hasn’t been easy to stick to the plan. I was on vacation week 2, ending the Girls on the Run season week 3. It was Christmas week 5 and New Year’s week 6. I’m on my way to a conference during week 8. There’s always something. But such is life. There always will be.
Knowing I would miss training days here and there each week, I did, however, commit to not missing particular runs: intermediate and long runs, and speed work. It’s paying off. Here are some highlights of my training so far:
- I ran 7 miles.
- I ran 8 miles.
- I came in 2nd in my division in last week’s 10K.
- I’ve cut one minute off my mile.
Tomorrow I get to run 9 miles. I am both nervous and excited as I see the distance grow each weekend. But I am no longer afraid. Instead, I celebrate every moment.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 4 so far )The Busk, or why I run before dawn
There are a dozen reasons to run before dawn. There’s no traffic. Car exhaust and other pollution haven’t elevated to choking level. Running sets your metabolism, you get the day’s run out of the way, it’s mental preparation for the day. These reasons all ring true for me, but there’s something more. With each sunrise I am reminded that every day is a busk.
In spring when the corn began to ripen, some American Indian tribes held a busk, a cleansing ceremony whose purpose was, in large part, renewal. Tribe members cleaned out their homes and threw all broken or unwanted items into a communal heap, which they burned. A new fire was kindled, and from it all the fires in town were kindled. During the ceremony, all offenses except murder were forgiven, and a new year began.
The Unity Church practices a ritual with a similar purpose: The Burning Bowl. In this New Year’s ceremony, individuals make two lists, one of the things they need to get rid of, and the other of their intentions for the year. The first list is burned; the second sealed, to be read later.
Both rituals serve the same purpose as New Year’s resolutions do for many of us. A new year promises a clean slate, the potential to do things right, set new goals. It’s a chance to start life anew. The opportunity to remake ourselves into something better, stronger. (Faster.)
Some seem to think that if they don’t set New Year’s resolutions, they’ve missed their chance for change. But we don’t have to wait for New Year’s Eve for that clean slate. We get a new beginning every day.
Each day that I get to run before dawn, I am reminded of this. A sunrise is like an opening hand, pink fingers flaming across the sky, releasing a new day. The most brilliant dawns remind me of a fire eating through the detritus of the previous day, cleansing it of the good and bad, clearing the way for new growth.
One reason running fills me with gratitude–I get to witness this. A new beginning, every day. Another chance to live right, do right. Another day I am blessed with.
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