Finding My Pace

This may or may not sound intelligible or even worthy of writing down, but .. there’s a lot of turmoil in my life currently, and none of it is fit for blog fodder. Which is hard, as someone who has blogged-for-therapy since 2004. Blogging has gotten me through my youth, my wedding, my marriage, my pregnancy, and many other “my”s. It’s saved me from “dropping my basket” more times than I can count, and it’s awkward and counter-intuitive for me to AVOID blogging what’s happening.

As a result, I haven’t had much by way of vocalizing or venting or anything like that. That’s fine, I thought; I’m a grown woman and I should be able to deal with these things on my own.

(I am not dealing well on my own, by the by.)

But. Life goes on and we don’t get to stop because there’s always laundry to be done and meals to be prepped and charts to be built and so on and so forth. One thing that I realized I needed as a stress relief was running. I realized that after I skipped last Monday’s running group and then the Saturday long run.

I debated skipping last night’s running group as well. It was raining, I felt run down, and I hadn’t run in well over a week. I knew I was setting myself up to fail.

I passed Bryan as I was driving to the running group, who was heavily engaged in a heated phone conversation. I again debated just not going, since there was obviously SOMETHING happening. But I drove. And, of course, as I parked my car in front of our meeting place, big ole fat rain drops began to fall.

We broke off into our various running groups – based somewhat on pace, but also on who we enjoy running with – and we fell into an easy pace. Okay, well, there is no EASY pace, but a comfortable one. I, personally, have a problem with pacing. I am a sprinter at heart. I often run too hard, too fast, and then end up walking through the rest of the race. I am struggling with finding and keeping my pace. But that feels larger than just running. I am – lately, anyway – quick to anger and frustration and then I exhaust myself emotionally. I need to start finding my pace in all aspects, not just where my feet hit the pavement.

I run with a couple of girls and we began catching up since I’d been gone. And as I talked, I realized how weird the words felt leaving my mouth – I kind of felt like I was blogging. They call it “talking”, Sarah. But I realized I hadn’t talked to anyone about it. And we ran, puffing through the hilly parts, laughing through our rest periods, and I realized that I almost wanted to cry because it was the first time I’d actually spoken about what is happening.

As we got to the last part, maybe 3/4 of the way through, my breath left me. I’ve mentioned a few times about how I’ve been unable to take deep breaths lately*, and I suddenly couldn’t breathe. I decided to slow down and let the others get ahead of me, but one of them wouldn’t let me. You’ll help me keep my pace so I can finish strong, she said. Let’s do this together. We can do this. Come on! And we did.

I know it sounds so silly and mundane and one of those things that bloggers blow out of proportion anyway, but she totally gave me the boost and the strength I needed. I needed someone to say, “No, I’ll help you and we’ll do this together” and she did. And I went home feeling stronger than I have in awhile. (I also ran 2 miles in the rain last night, em effers!) And I felt like maybe I’ve found my pace where my feet hit the pavement. So now I can move on to finding my pace somewhere else as well.

*Hey! Also! Have adult-onset asthma! So, while everyone else seems to be pretty freaked out by that, I’m all YAY GIVE ME AN INHALER SO I CAN BREATHE AGAIN. It doesn’t seem to be triggered by exercise – Dr admitted that it sounded like I almost got through the run last night unscathed and he’s right – so I’m good to not change anything other than taking a few puffs a day. SUHWEET.