Falling short

Surely it must be a flaw in my soul, this prideful idea that I am meant to be something special.  But no, that sounds wrong.  Everyone is destined to be something special.  What beloved child is not something wonderful, amazing, and special in his or her own way?  I guess my problem is that I let myself compare my special with the special of others and pretty much always find myself not special enough.  I look around at the blessed life I lead, a life filled with remarkable friends, healthy family, abundant food and more than adequate clothing and shelter, and I think, "And this is it?  This is all I'm meant to be?"  Where does the notion come from that I should be always more and more and more?  When, at the end of every day I feel like I've completely used up all of my available resources, why do I still feel like I'm not doing anything?

It could be, of course, that I spend hours every day on stuff no one else respects or even notices, stuff that is undone as soon as I do it.  But let's leave that bit of bitterness alone for today.  Let's just say my house is never in order.

I have a friend, not a close one, but a friendly acquaintance from 20 years ago and still today, who last year didn't qualify for Boston.  She considers me the runner.  This year, she beat her BQ time by over ten minutes and got in.  This year, I am running short and slow.  I didn't get into Boston.  It's not like the Olympic trials or anything.  It's a silly marathon run at an inconvenient time of year that most of my running friends have already done.  Even so, I haven't made it there.  And really, I don't see why I care other than it seems to mark me as not-all-that-good at running.

I am barely adequate when it comes to music as well.  I am the weak link in my section.  Even after practicing the Barnes piece almost every day, I still couldn't keep up at rehearsal last night.  I didn't major in music.  I put my horn away for a decade.  I don't practice enough.  I'm pulling us all down.

Mostly, I suppose, I get down because I used to feel like my mind was something special.  I used to think I must be destined to do something interesting.  I have always always wanted to be a writer.  For a while I wanted to be a scientist.  For a few years I was a decent teacher.  And now.... Well, it turns out I don't have anything to say, I don't have any special knowledge to contribute, and I quit teaching.

Yes, go ahead and say that I am doing the most important and valuable job in the world.  Yes, I've heard that, and I don't necessarily have an argument against it.  A good mother is invaulable.  But let's be honest here, I'm not all that spectacular as a mother.  I'm sitting here bemoaning my uselessness while my daughter is watching Robinhood.  I don't do interesting crafts or field trips.  Most days, even the ones where one kid is at school all day and the other goes to preschool and nap, by the end of the day I can't even listen to them anymore.  I am impatient and uncreative and weary when it comes to parenting.  I do make really good food for my family, but they would rather have hot dogs or grilled cheese anyway.

My life is beautiful and perfect, and many days it feels like I'm trapped in a hole anyway.  A lovely hole, but one where I'll never accomplish anything of much worth, where I'm missing out on the bigger world I was meant to inhabit.  Some day they'll throw the dirt in over me, the grass will sprout, and I will have disappeared without having done anything worth remembering.

[P.S.  Mother Theresa smiles at me with pity and says, "We can do no great things, only small things with great love."  Another load of laundry, take Gretchen to soccer class, drive to the bread store for wheat-free bread.]

When Nothing Existed but Chaos....

In this week's Bible study class on Genesis 1, Pastor Bill mentioned that Frederick Buechner says that writing is really about just sitting down every day and doing it, regardless of the fact that most of what gets written does not feel or read as if it was divinely inspired.  (I don't have citation for this idea.  I'll have to look for it in all my spare time.  Ha ha.)  Julia Alvarez says the same thing.  Anne Lamott says the same thing.  Madeleine L'Engle says the same thing.  The first step is always always always sit your butt down and do it.  So there's the what.  As for the why, Genesis 1 promises us that we are made in the image of God and that God creates.  He uses words to put the world into order.

So for the next hour I am sitting my butt down in the midst of mess that is verging dangerously close to chaos, squalor, or both, even though what I really want to be doing is eating a cookie, which would, of course, necessitate making cookies instead of writing.  Chocolate chip, I think, with walnuts.  Or maybe a nice apple cake with maple frosting....

So let's talk about the reign of chaos over our lives.  My life at least.  A blessedly close and honest friend of mine called me up last week to tell me she had a bad mommy day.  She had yelled at her daughter, mostly over her daughter's flippancy toward her part in the domestic chaos.  Oh, sister, I thought, I hear you.  But I can top you any day of the week.  I am nothing if not competitive at the sport of falling short.  My day that day had just happened to have begun with a visit to the elementary school principal's office so that one of the fruits of my loins could explain to the principal the incident that said fruit claimed to have forgotten when previously interrogated by said principal.  How did it go?  Fruit-of-my-loins, although he had made a full confession/explanation after several hours of sitting in his room and being periodically grilled by one parent and then another, claimed once again that he didn't remember the incident in question.  GAHHH!!  That same day I realized about 9:30am that, in spite of notes being sent home by the music teacher, the PTO, and the classroom teacher both in paper and electronic formats, I had failed to dress my forgetful fruit in red, white and blue for the ceremony about the anniversary of the National Anthem in which he was singing.  Furthermore, I had been invited to that ceremony, which had taken place at 9am.  Good mom.

The following day was my daughter's birthday.  I woke up feeling miserable with a cold.  Full body aches and fatigue, on top of the usual head, throat and nasal problems.  Determined to be a better mom, I got up early anyway to make two batches of pancakes: one without wheat or dairy, one with pink food coloring.  I made snacks for the preschool class and stayed at preschool the whole morning.  I came home and made lunch and strawberry layer cake.  I felt beyond awful, and when my daughter said she just wanted to lie down and take a nap, I said she could.  I didn't make her use the bathroom.  So, of course, later in the afternoon she came down to the family room, where I had just moments before fallen asleep, and told me she had to go potty.  I yelled with a scratchy voice for her to go to the bathroom, but I didn't follow her in there quickly enough, so she came back to the family room and had an accident on the carpeting.  Hearing me scream at her, she ran to the bathroom, emptying her bladder through the hallway and half of the bathroom.  Not the half with the toilet.  She was empty by then.  I screamed at her, on her birthday (oh, on her birthday on her birthday on her birthday,) but that took all of my remaining energy, so while she sat in the bathroom and sobbed (she was in the clean half), I was kneeling in puddles of urine, also sobbing, which made her sob all the harder.  I asked her, "When you have to go potty, what should you do?" over and over and over again, making her repeat the answer (go the toilet) over and over and over again, while trapped in the bathroom by ponds of urine and a sobbing mother.  On her birthday.  Incidentally, I found out today that I was supposed to have returned the picture order form to preschool on that day as well.  I just didn't know I had missed that due date until her teacher asked me about it today. 

In the mean time, my kitchen counters have been overtaken with vegetables and apples and pink cake and pans and items from the grocery store I haven't put away and napkins I haven't washed.  Apparently there's a picture order form somewhere in there as well.  The dining room is covered in sleeping bags my husband is "airing out" and the bags and camping equipment he doesn't even claim are there for any reason other than he didn't put them away.  The shower is covered in mildew.  The guest bed is covered in clean but unfolded clothes, and the rest of the clothes we own are still dirty.  Child number one wore to his picture day today a shirt that I pulled out of the dirty laundry, shook out, sniffed, and handed over.  Good enough.  The family room is unnavigable because it is covered in toys.  The pillows from the couches have joined the sleeping bags in the dining room to make a fort.  The apple tree in the back yard is so heavy with ripe fruit that some branches are nearly touching the ground, and the apples are getting eaten by worms and birds.

How did this happen?  How did I get so far behind when I don't even have a job?  I do not wish to live so frantically.  I want the water to separate from the dry land and the light from the dark.  That would be good.  But where to start?  How do other people have houses that are neat and clean?  I want that.  How do other people remember not only to dress their children in patriotic colors on the anniversary of the national anthem but also to have matching socks and hair bows for all of their daughters' outfits?  I should mention here that my daughter only has outfits because a kind relative in California sends us boxes of clothes periodically.

And yet.

I sit here writing this.  This evening I will take a child to soccer practice.  Later, I will go to band.  (I will feel guilty that I only practiced once--last night.)  I went running this morning at 5:30am.  I walked to preschool when I could have taken a car.  I biked there and back for the pick-up.  Tomorrow I will go do PTO work at the elementary school and then take child #2 to her soccer practice, and I'll probably do those errands by bike.  I will have my sister come over, if she happened not to read this and is therefore not too horrified by the mess to set foot in my house.  I will run with my running club.

The first Mary assignment in my Mary and Martha housekeeping book is to write down why I want a clean house.  It can be in poem form, or I can write it on a pretty sign and post it somewhere as decoration.  "Hurray!" I thought, when I read that first assignment.  My first housekeeping task is to write!  And I know why I want my house to be clean.  I feel better when my house is clean.  I breathe more easily.  I smile more.  I can relax (well, sort of) and play with my kids.  Perhaps more importantly, I feel that I can be more hospitable to others when my house is clean.  I want to be able to say to anyone who needs a place to meet or relax or eat or chat or spend the night: here!  Come here!  Stay here!  Sit here!  Eat my apples.  Taste one of these walnut chocolate chip cookies.  Talk to me.  Breathe and feel well and loved.

It's a good reason to spend my time cleaning and making order, is it not?

I suspect that my life is perhaps a bit too full to be completely orderly, and that is good too.  If I did not have children to feed and clothe and nurture, if they did not participate in sports or dance or music or scouts or school, if I did not have Bible study and church committees, if I didn’t chair a PTO committee, if I did not make music, if I did not read and write, if I did not have a garden, if I was not committed to ethical and healthful and joyful eating, well, then, I think I might have less mildew in my shower, and the laundry would be cleaned, folded and put away before it was needed on picture day or National Anthem day.  And while I'm sorry my house is a mess, I'm not sorry about why.

There is reason behind my chaos, if not full order.  Priorities.  Relationships.  Good.

Why it's OK to spend my Sunday afternoon writing this

I think I might be a discipline addict. Perhaps the reason I get to feeling so bogged sometimes is that my answer to everything is a new discipline. Training plans for running, Daily Guide to Prayer to recommend scripture passages, a promise to myself that I will write every day, and now, as if that was not enough, I started a new book called 31 Days to Clean: Having a Martha House the Mary Way. There are reasons that discipline is good though. It works for me with running. I need the help with the cleaning and the ordinances to keep it from getting overwhelming, and I believe that it is necessary with writing as well.

What I really want to write about today is running, so I'll get to that, but I need to take a quick side-trip to the world of writing. Or, more accurately, to being visible and vulnerable, and writing is one way I am doing that. I was going to write this today on a sheet of white paper and tuck it away somewhere that no one, not even I, would ever see it. But I am struggling struggling struggling (still, again, always) with calling. How am I to be making a difference on this planet given my particular circumstances and non-helpful array of gifts? How can I use the things I do and enjoy to be of service to others? Oh, I'd love to write some life-changing novel and become esteemed and called upon to give inspiring talks.... But here's the problem: I don't seem to have a novel in me just now. And who is that goal serving? Well, I do want to bless people as I have been blessed by some really touching novels. I do. But the esteemed part.... Yeah, that's about me, not you. (I intend to come back to that pride thing in regards to running.) The content I do have available to me is this kind of thing. I've been writing in my journal--sometimes daily, sometimes not quite--since early on in high school. Well over twenty years. Mostly, it's petty and personal and doesn't seem the least bit like service. Who needs to read what I write about my morning run or the trials of trying to clean up tar and bleach simultaneously? But lots of people have read "Why You Should Run," which is really just a spiffed-up journal entry. And some people far away and who I've never met have been inspired by it. And today at church a friend I didn't know read my blog or ran (although I should have remembered this) told me that she liked it. And it occurs to me that writing about running, and maybe sometimes about some other things, might be an act of service. A small, trivial one. A start. And maybe, sometimes, the conversation could include some more important stuff. At the least, it might let people know me enough to say hello, enough to call upon me when I am needed, enough to plant a relationship seed.

Hopefully, that's what happened today. I've been working on some adult education stuff for church this weekend, and so I am reminded that we are supposed to be practicing talking the walk. Definitely we are called to act. We are called to feed the hungry and visit the sick and imprisoned. But we are also called to commune, to include, to form friendships, to be fishers of men, and--dare I say this?--I believe that words actually are as powerful as deeds when it comes to that sort of thing. It sounds too easy. But to some, it also sounds too hard. It's more comfortable for some of us to pitch in and do with a quiet smile and a friendly wave than to be still and reach that wave into a handshake and the do into a tell. It seems like a lot of vulnerability with no visible result. You can build a house for the homeless and see that it is done. You can cook a meal and watch the hungry eat it. Most of the time, when you send yourself out into the world, you have no idea if it has done any good. I believe, though, that if opening your doors and windows helps someone find a home in your presence, it is worth the risk.

After church today, not being burdened with a husband eager to get out of church, I got to spend some time in fellowship hall. I closed the place down, actually. My daughter had a piece of cake and some friends and some unnecessary bleachers to play on, so she was happy. I talked to some people I needed to touch base with about church stuff, and then I noticed a woman with small children who looked familiar, but I couldn't place her. She wasn't talking to anyone, but she was there in fellowship hall.

Back story: A few years ago I took a trip to the east coast to visit a good friend who had recently relocated there and was having a hard time finding a new community of friends. She is naturally far more outgoing and extroverted than I am. Not shy. Really friendly. And not finding friends. Huh. She commented that she didn't know her neighbors. I went out for a run one morning and was greeted by the woman who lived across the street. She apologized for not saying anything the past few months but now wanted to welcome me to the neighborhood. I thanked her and suggested she make an effort to say the same to my friend who actually lived there.  A day late and a euro short, lady.  I began to understand the problem.  On Sunday we went to church.  Afterwards, in an attempt to forge some connections, we went downstairs to coffee hour in the church basement.  There were donuts for sale (feeding not the hungry, necessarily, unless they came to church with cash,) and we bought a couple just to have a reason to stick around.  (A shout out here to the people who brought and served cake today in honor of their 60th wedding anniversary.  It kept the family I was about to meet in the fellowship hall long enough for me to meet them.)  All of the tables in that east coast church basement were either empty or filled to capacity (note to church: leave some empty seats at every table!), so my friend, her husband, and I decided to start a new table and hope that people would join us.  We thought it had worked when, only a few minutes later, someone came up to us and asked if the chairs next to us were taken.  We put on our happiest glowy faces, and my friend is master of the happy friendly face, and said, "No!! Please!!  They're yours!!"  At which point the questioner thanked us and took said chairs over to a crowded table that had run out of chairs, leaving us at our empty table without the possibility of being joined.  Ugh.  Don't worry: my friend is in a better place now with friends galore, but that visit made a huge impression on me.  How NOT to love your neighbor.

Emboldened by my recent committee efforts and my long-ago donut experience, I said to the woman, as she was bent over dealing with a small child, "You look familiar, but I cannot place you.  I'm Cara."  "Oh," she answered, "I heard you speak some time ago about learning how to do triathlons.  Maybe that's when you saw me.  I haven't made it here much lately."  I had, some time ago, agreed to be part of the message at the women's advent service.  It was slightly scary but surprisingly painless, and it meant that I was out there just enough to have a connection today.  And so we began a genuine conversation, sparked by questions about running and running injuries and ending with an e-mail address and an invitation to participate in a future gathering.  It may be working, this being out there thing, this sharing of trivial stories and silly details.

Time to dance on the table

This morning I watched, puzzled, as my mother-in-law dug around in the cabinet for my favorite mug and then poured juice into it. OK. Whatever. The next time I looked her way, she had found an old juice glass and filled it with cereal. And that was when I realized that I am way too uptight.

Why You Should Run

Because some night you will not sleep well, and morning will come both too soon and not soon enough. Later, you will not remember standing up, only finding yourself already up, noticing that although this time last week the days were in the 90s and the mornings were still hot and humid, today it is 44 degrees outside, and you do not remember how to dress for a run in cool weather. You will put on a fluorescent orange long-sleeved shirt, because it is still very dark out at 5:30am this time of year, and you will forget to bring gloves.

You should run because even if you went to bed anxious and grumpy, thinking about all of the things that need to get done in an inadequate amount of time in the coming week, you feel like you have a secret advantage, a stop-time machine, perhaps, when you are running through dark neighborhoods full of still-sleeping people. Or if the people in the houses are, in fact, awake, they are still lying in bed, waiting to hit the snooze button again, or standing blearily under the hot shower. Their lights are off. Their children are asleep. The peace of early morning is irresistible, and it seeps into the muscles between your shoulders and your neck, and more things are possible than were last night. Or, perhaps, fewer things really matter.  This moment is about nothing beyond the hypnotic rhythm of your own feet, the effortless strength of your thighs, the feel of cool air on your calf muscles.

You should run because you need a chance to let it all out every now and then. Because you really don't want to scream or punch things in front of your children. Because your husband really is a nice guy who is doing his best. Because no one, not even the people who already love you, really wants to deal with the full force you, but the track doesn't mind. You should run because 400 meters is just long enough to require both concentration and full effort. There isn't room in your head or your arms or you soul for anything else. You have to remind yourself at every footfall to push push push push. To be strong in your abdomen and light in your heels. Not to dig your nails into your palms, but to relax your grip, to fly through discomfort with as much peace as possible. You should run because your heart pounds in your ears and your lungs push on your stomach, but after you've crossed the line in precisely the second you wished to do so, you get a couple of minutes to calm down and look around, and you do.

You should run because some morning, three sandhill cranes might fly, croaking, just over your head and stalk around the infield while you run around them. They will pretend that you are not there, you crazy human running around and around before sunrise. They are nearly bigger than you are, anyway. Or maybe a hawk will swoop down and perch on the scoreboard, watching the field to your south for signs of snakes or rodents. He will squint at you, as if not sure whether or not to believe in you, not sure he recognizes your particular breed, but he will look it up later in his human-watching book. The killdeer will skitter across the track just ahead of you, not wanting to be trampled, but too silly to remember they can fly.

You should run because halfway through your workout, you will notice that the morning is light enough to show you your breath on the calm-down laps. When you are two repeats from finishing, the sun will have risen enough to blaze over the rooftops of the no-longer-sleeping neighborhood and blind you on the back straight so that you cannot see your watch to know if you are hitting your paces. You do not mind.

You should run because as you are running toward home across dew-soaked fields, the first middle school teachers will be arriving in the parking lot, and the high school kids will be peering out from their thick brushed-forward bangs, and you will know that for them, for you, this is another ordinary day, and thank God for that.

You should run because when you arrive home, sweaty and shaky-legged, your seven-year-old might not want his oatmeal and will dawdle instead of brushing his teeth and putting on his shoes, and as you gently shove him out the front door so he doesn't miss the bus, he will tell you that oh yeah, this weekend he had music homework he forgot about until now. You should run because your four year old's music class has been canceled and rescheduled for the same time as preschool. You should run because the kitchen is still a mess from last night's dinner and rabbits have eaten the delphinium you planted last week. But no matter what may not get done during the day or what may go wrong, you have already had an hour that was yours, and for that hour, all the world was as it should be.

Tomorrow, you should run again.

Summer ends

I did start to write about the triathlon I did a week and a half ago, but it's been very very hard to find time to write anything this summer.  Writing is a thing that I feel I ought to attempt to do with some sort of discipline, something like the way I run, but it also feels self-indulgent when there are children and a messy house and places to go.  But today is rainy, so no one is in a hurry to go anywhere.  I've let the kids watch TV for far too long.  It's the last day of summer, and I am feeling OK with being all manners of self-indulgent.  I've already had a slice of zucchini/carrot/ginger bread this morning.  Just because it was there.  And today I am looking ahead toward days of renewed structure and feel the need to mark the occassion and meditate upon it.

In the past, I've been excited for Adam as he starts a new year, but mostly I've been weepy and nostalgic that my baby is grown up and going off into the world without me, to learn how to be something other than mine.  He goes off and does and learns things that I am not at all a part of, both because I cannot be and because he would not choose me to be.  As the bus drives away with my boy, I miss him.  Our house feels funny.  The day feels sort of empty.

But this year, except for just now as I wrote that and started to tear up, I have been looking forward to school starting up again, even though it means that my boy will ride off on a bus and even my little girl will walk into a school building without me twice a week.  I haven't looked forward to the starting of school this much since I was a little kid.

I used to secretly disdain mothers who said things like that or who would say things like "how many days until school starts?"  I will now publicly apologize for my secret thoughts.  I see now that there might have been something more going on than just some lazy desire for someone else to take over the job of raising a child.  I do not believe myself to be lazy.  I do not want someone else to raise my child.  But I do want him to go off to school.

I think what's happening here is similar to how we as people deal with the change in the seasons: the first snow is beautiful and exciting, but by early March, we cannot wait for it to melt.  By August we are more irritable about the mosquitos and the need for a heat index.  We are ready to tun off the air conditioning and love the occassional whiff of autumn on the breeze; we are enchanted by the red appearing on the apples and think wearing a sweater would be lovely.  So too with family life.  We had a great time spending all day every day together: going to swimming lessons, camping, travelling, having picnics in the park, playing with toys for endless hours with no concern for the clock, but now it is time for something else.  The routine we needed a break from in June now seems like a break from the every-day-is-different chaos of summer.I look at our September calendar, already stuffed to bursting with the start-up of school (we have back-to-it events [all involving food: a corn boil and two ice cream socials] on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday) and park district classes and cub scouts and soccer and PTO stuff and Doug's high school stuff and church classes, and while a part of me inhales sharply, braces myself, and thinks, "here we go again," another part of me sort of grins: it's good stuff.  It will be fun.  We will learn and grow and be with our community.  It's energizing.  This craziness coming up is why we come back from vacation at all.  It is how we survive the decreasing hours of daylight and the eventual death of the over-abundant cucumber plants.  We are not busy against our wills but because there are just so many things worth doing.  School is one of them.  I loved school, and I want my children to have that same transformative experience.  I am happy for them.

I suppose it may also be possible that I have learned from experience.  One can always hope, right?  Yes, my son has a whole life away from me at school, but then he comes home in the early afternoon, and I get to be his mom still.  Someday he will go off and not come back.  Some day he will move out.  He might get married.  He might get a job far away.  He might just realize that his mom is a wacky and intense person.  But for now, he is just going to second grade, and he'll bring his homework back for me to force him to complete.  I'll still be the one who packs his lunch and who deals with his allergies.  I'll still be the one who takes him to soccer practice and to play dates.  I'll be the one to whom he will show his lego creations and read funny poems and jokes.  I'll be the one who sets bedtime.  And those hours while he's at school?  Well let's just say that he and his sister will not be bickering and whining, the mosquito equivalent in the domestic weather of August.

So this morning I sat here and wrote, and my kids watched PBS kids for over an hour (gasp) and are now happily playing in their rooms, one huming and one whistling, one of them still in pajamas as we approach lunchtime.  It's storming, so we are blowing off the errands we maybe ought to do because today we can still do that.  Tomorrow our busy lives resume, and I may feel a little weepy as my boy drives off on the bus.  But then we have a lot of things we need to get done and not many hours before we have to be here for when he gets back off the bus. 

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is dehydrated

There was a time, oh, a long long time ago before I had children, when I used to run several races per summer and with very little expectation.  I did them because they were there, because they were fun and challenging, because someone handed you water mid-run, and because other people were doing them.  If I did better than previous races, I was happy about that.  My ambitions were modest.

After I quit my paying gig and finished grad classes, running changed.  It became less of an incidental and more of something around which I centered my days.  I planned races in advance; I looked up or borrowed training schedules; I set goals and trained to meet them.  I used running to get me up in the morning, to get me through the day, the week, the season.  I am grateful to running for being that for me when I was in the otherwise landmark-barren wilderness of early motherhood.

The problem with false idols, though, is that eventually they fall over or crumble or get lost or stolen.  When it comes to athletic excellence, my spirit is willing, but my flesh is weak.  It gets pregnant.  It gets neuro-muscular dysfunctions.  Muscles get strained or pulled.  Joints swell up and get stiff.  It has limits far below what I am willing to endure.  And when injury happens, as it always does, it takes longer to recover than I expect, and I am sad and lost and isolated from the mists of early morning and the full force of the heat of mid-summer.   

Having just reemerged from the dark days of injury, uncertainty, surgery, and rehabilitation, I intended for this summer to be one of rejoicing in my recovered ability to get out and go, to push, to be outside in and part of the elements: to run in the rain and the heat, to go fast or far.  To appreciate. 

But somewhere in the midst of appreciating it occurred to me that I spent a good half a year getting most of my exercise in the pool and in the saddle of a bike.  And, on top of that, my foot was recovering more slowly than I wanted.  I couldn’t just jump back into the mileage where I left off.  Hence, I supplement with some bike rides and swims.  Since I cannot get in shape for a marathon this fall, and since even the half marathon seems like it will be a long-shot, I thought I ought to sign up for a triathlon.  For fun.  Because it's there and I think I can.  And because the goody bag includes a new bike shirt, and I need another one.  Why not earn it by doing something cool?  So I signed up for my third olympic-distance triathlon.

I signed up only a month before the event, which, even if I was going to be home and have tons of free time for the entire month, is just not enough to do a real training program.  Most plans take 8-16 weeks.  Plus, one of the weeks left to me will be family vacation: no bike, no pool.  And one of those weeks should be taper.  Hmm.  That leaves me, oh, this week to train.  Suddenly, the "I'm just going to do this for fun" attitude became a little harder to maintain.  Panic lurks just beneath my one-day-at-a-time exterior.  I got up in the middle of the night to write down a training schedule for the next week.

I meant to do a long run and a long bike ride over the weekend, but I realized I had not been swimming much for the last two weeks.  So Saturday I swam.  It was a good workout.  I couldn't run that day anyway, having run the previous two, and my legs were truly tired.  Sunday I did a 51 mile bike ride, which was also good, but it was hot, and I didn't feel like doing a brick long-bike, long run in that heat.  I was pretty much finished after 51 miles.  (Sort of dampened any thoughts of half ironman I had been secretly harboring.)  Yesterday was my kettlebell class, so I only had time for five miles after that.  Which meant today had to be the long run.  But now I haven't been swimming for several days, so I was going to do that mid-morning.  I had it all worked out in my head so that I was getting at least a little of everything. 

Alas.  I woke up this morning to windows that had not only steamed up on the outside but were also dripping.  I had read, only two nights ago, about how/when to modify running workout goals based on dew point.  Anything over 74 degrees, it said, should be written off.  The heat is just going to be too oppressive.  The dew point this morning was 76 degrees.  I had put the long run off for so long and for so many different reasons that I decided I had to just go for it.  I vowed to go easy on the pace and to reassess when it still made sense to turn around early.

I ended up going 11.5 miles, a little over two and a half miles more than my longest run of the last nine months.  My surgery foot was fine: only a little stiff and sore after I stopped and was stretching.  I can live with that.  My hip occasionally felt a little uneven, but I concentrated on form and never lost control, so I can live with that too.  I didn't even feel like I was really being affected by the heat that much, other than being thoroughly drenched and having squishy shoes, until I was already on the way home, and there was nothing much to do but keep going.  Those last couple of miles, which were mostly uphill, I was lamenting that 11.5 miles would feel so hard when just last year I was in shape enough that 11.5 was common.  Endurance is so hard to win and so easy to lose. 

Upon arriving home, I took a cool shower, but I was still hot and sweaty and was apparently acting unwell enough that Doug, who has left me home alone with a stomach virus and a toddler, asked if he should stay home from work.  Although I didn't feel it happening at the time, apparently I gave myself something akin to heat exhaustion.  Boo.  I lost a little over three pounds of sweat, which is almost 3% of my body weight.  I just didn't have it in me to do another workout of any quality, even one in a pool.

Another plan to get it all in ruined.   Another occasion to accept that I am naught but fallible flesh.  Another reason why this triathlon should be done for fun, for the finish, and for the shirt.