have a day

 marathon training is no joke…  not that I’ve heard many people try to joke about it… but if they did try, I’d stop them in their tracks and tell them it is no joking matter…

I was on death’s doorstep sick a few weeks ago and then went to Mexico with the farmer, which I did attempt to run there but it was mainly really sweaty power walking…

so this week I’m still training but ‘hurting’ I’d say… my legs are like ‘what??’ …  they don’t get the sudden need to run forever…

so the other day I woke up, all mentally prepared to do my 8.5 mile run that was on my calendar…  running in the middle of now-where in Saskatchewan has its benefits and its downfalls…

this particular morning the wind was whipping through – just whip, no nae nae – and it was cold and cloudy and snow in the forecast…

I had my sometimes running partner, my oldest son, go out onto the road where you can feel the wind and tell me if I should run outside or do a terribly long 8.5 miles on the treadmill…

he came back in and told me ‘absolutely don’t run outside… I barely can get to the bus’…

now, my entire life, if someone has told me not to do something, everything in me wants to do it to just see why they didn’t want me to attempt it…  I decided I’d do two 4 mile laps… and then a bit more… that way if I needed to quit the outside running and hit the treadmill I could…

I put my older dog in the garage, bribing her with chicken bones, which I know some pampered dogs can’t handle eating but my farm dogs have no problem with… (again, don’t tell me my dogs can’t eat chicken bones)… and told my younger dog, Lacy, to get her game face on…  and off we went…

the wind was a funny thing…  running east, north and west was awful…  only direction that was ok was south…  I even yelled at the wind…  I said ‘are you kidding me… stop it’…  it seemed indifferent to my yelling…

there were 4 distinct times I felt like quitting… even had a tiny little cry the one time…

I picture some people running and they look all cute and athletic… I knew I was purple faced, snot on my gloves, tears in my eyes and luckily the wind was whisking away the odour pouring off of me…

I discovered that my music becomes a bit of a ‘white noise’ that helps me not to realize how heavy I am breathing… after a few miles my thoughts take over and I solve a lot of the world’s problems and my own problems…

only to not be able to recall most of my light bulb moments when I get home due to exhaustion…

not a single vehicle went by me…  I saw a fox, some antelope, lots of geese and swans… but not a human being… I was out there for almost an hour and a half and nothing…

when my headphones finally told me I could quit…  I collapsed down and hugged my dog… she was just as relieved as me… she told me that…

we had a makeout session…  I’m not sure if that motivates her to run again with me or if it is a deterrent…  jury is still out on that…  but I needed the love…

this all happened before 9:30 am and I felt like my family’s hero and a champion… I stretched, showered, iced and made the farmer a really yummy kale and egg lunch…

this is when the exhaustion caught up with me and when he came home for lunch and pointed out a book keeping error that I needed to correct, the water-works began…

it was like someone had died… that is how hard I cried… it felt like I couldn’t stop it and it was like every last bit of energy was coming out in tears…

he thanked me for lunch and tried to quietly slip outside and back to work…

I spent the afternoon correcting the book keeping error and then thought it was a good idea to call SaskTel, our cell provider, with a complaint I had with their rural high speed internet…  (high speed is a bit of an exaggeration)…

I began speaking with the first Sasktel employee and realized this was not going anywhere and asked to talk to his supervisor…  I got a lady on the phone after being on hold for awhile and my emotions were still pretty raw…

she basically told me my high speed internet was like another cell phone, with a limit of data I could use… blah, blah, blah…

I told her that Sasktel needed to up their game in rural areas and that I wouldn’t use so much internet if it didn’t take me the better part of a day to download a movie!

then it got sad… because the tears were right behind my eyeballs and I was fighting them and the lady at the same time…

some people say nothing they do in their life is a mistake…  that all your experiences lead you to where you need to be… I don’t agree…  I have many, many moments I wish I could go back and have a do-over…  this is one of those moments…

I said ‘so you think I’m a bad mom because I let me daughter watch old Full House episodes after school on Netflix… is that it???’…

‘my kids are very active, they aren’t fat tubs of lard sitting around watching YouTube all day’  (although lately they kinda are)

‘I have friends that don’t even have TV and just use their internet…  you are telling me I use more internet than them?’

‘how much money do you earn, Shirley?  enough to pay this bill that I am every month for crappy internet?  well, I’m not rich enough for this’

and then the tears won the battle and I had to excuse myself from the conversation… she said something  like ‘I’m really sorry you’re having such a bad day’ and at that point I couldn’t even form a sentence and gurgling some response like ‘thank you’ and had to hang up…

to make matters worse, the weather was getting better and it was turning into a beautiful day and here I chose to run at the absolute worst part of the day…  I’m not trusting the farmer’s sense of forecasting ever again…

the kids got off the bus and came in and I told them straight up ‘I’ve cried twice today for no reason so you all need to avoid me most likely’

my middle son told me ‘mom, whenever I’m having a bad day, I just think of my teacher…   she’s had a really hard life and a friend of hers just died this weekend… I’m sure your life is better than hers’

this made me laugh… and cry…  happy cry… but the kids all went far away from me just in case it wasn’t a happy cry…

that night, as I was heading off to sleep, the farmer said to me ‘this marathon training is really something eh?  you think it’s a good thing?’

 

for some people it is I’m sure… for some…