I have not written for some time...lots has happened.  Despite my absence for this blog, I was running several times a week until mid-July when we moved to Colorado.  WOW is it hard to breath here!!  The first attempt to run left me breathless and only 3 houses down!!  So here I am, cold, homesick, struggling not to sink into the depths of depression and unable to breathe...a wretched combination.  Last week I ran, and clearly, since I am blogging, did not die...a good start!!!  I find that as the days creep by I am so incredibly homesick that it seems to painful to even call my friends and despite my best efforts my tears find a way to the surface almost daily.  But alas, this is not living (and the muffin is not going to disappear on its own!) so I decided that running would be the first step in resuming my life formerly in progress!!!   This morning was the beginning of my quest to beat the hell out of this depression without pharmaceuticals...wish me luck!!! 

Despite feeling that I wasn't really fooling myself, I put on my old friends (in an attempt to find comfort somewhere) and started out.  Good tunes on my ipod, feet not feeling too bad, still breathing...I began to look around.  I found that Colorado is really a beautiful place and there is an amazing trail system that stretches between the communities.  So I challenged myself to find 3 things that I like about my new environment:

The number 3 thing that I like about Colorado today is the mountains.  I think they are beautiful and the dusting of snow that we can see from down here is both exciting and daunting.

The number 2 thing that I like about Colorado today is the trail system.  I like that I only saw one other person and therefore was able to just stay lost in my own mixed up head!!

The number 1 think that I like about Colorado today is the chill in the air.  It is cold enough that I have to wear a fleece pull over and I LOVE THAT IT COVERS THE MUFFIN!!!

Sage advise from a loving friend

I haven't ran for 2 days due to the torrential rain.  I love running in the rain but I draw the line at flash flooding!! This morning was just the right amount of rain.  I used to love wearing my hood up, music on, and just getting lost in my thoughts.  This was the first time this has happened so it felt like one of those long awaited, sensual embraces!! 

After the first few, always painful (and possibly made more painful by the 2 generous glasses of wine I had last night) minutes, I started my journey inside Nyki's head...do not try this at home!!!  Over the weekend one of my dearest male friends, who-must-not-be-named, read my first entry, told me that real men do not mind muffin-tops.  I felt like I had been caught sleep walking naked at a RUSH concert, how could that be, seeing as how I had grown to loathe it!!  But that was not all the perspective shifting news, he went on to say real men are happy to have a naked women beside them (I am paraphrasing, of course).  I have spent the last few days kicking this around in my head, trying to make sense of the radical idea and have one question...Is that with the lights on or off?  Perhaps it is best if we leave that one rhetorical?  I do not believe that my goal, at this point anyway, is to be able to bounce a quarter off my abs, but seeing less of my own skin color is right up there.

Regrets?

Have you ever made a choice that seemed good at the time, but in the deepest part of the night you awoke racked with regret?  And you spent the next 2 agonizing, sleep chasing hours asking "What was I thinking?"?  Well, here we are....
At 1:30 AM I awoke to my "gotta-go" internal alarm, and, on a normal night, I would execute this routine with the rapid precision of a well trained ninja...last night was no normal night!!  Last night this task took on the characteristics of an epic adventure. 
I do not remember getting out of bed, yet am clear when my adventure began.  I was painfully jolted from my mobile slumber when I attempted to lower myself to my porcelain throne.  Suddenly the back of my right leg was trying to free itself from the confines of my hip, I found myself grasping, albeit unsuccessfully, for anything to hold onto.  My bathroom has precious little but smooth, traction-less walls, so I watched as got closer to the floor and it drifted out of focus (yes, I also have lack-of-close-up vision to add to my growing list of things to be grateful for).  I am on the floor, rolling around, trying desperately to get myself to a sitting position so I can stretch this angry hamstring but I am unable to straighten my leg, my limbs flailing like a cockroach stuck on his back, and I hear the pounding of paws approaching at an alarming rate.  Apparently this sort of display is some canine signal for "Lick my face".  So now I am rolling on the floor, attempting to bat the dog away, which only makes him pounce harder, not exactly the intended goal, and all I can do is laugh.  Somehow I rolled myself closer to a wall, put my leg up and stretched this angry beast while laying on my back.  As the pain began to subside I heard some distant voice asking..."What were you thinking...returning to running at your age?".   I am not certain how he got into my bathroom at 2:00am, but I unleashed a few choice words and made an executive decision...I would take the day off and rest my traumatized hamstring.

A date...plus one

It was one of those days...two ships passing.  I could not seem to make time for my run today.  I was determined to make this work, after all my new running shoes and I were just getting acquainted.  I decided that dinner was over-rated and that a run would serve me much better, and get me away from all the people who were complaining that there was no dinner.  As I am attempting to sneak out of a very reluctant sliding glass door, who appears freakishly quietly by my side...my daughter.  "What cha doin?" There I was, a deer in the headlights...do I lie so I can sneak away to my painfully delayed rendezvous? OR, do I muffin up to the plate and be a good role model?  You know how tough this choice was...I did it, I succumbed to the peer pressure inside my head and took the high, yet over-rated, road.  Do you remember when your parents would say "Sure you can go on a date with "Emilio" but you have to take your little brother with you?".  My run today was like a date with an 11 year old chaperone.  We got to the corner (the first one) when it started...Can we walk now?  Where are you going?  Wait up!!  MOM!  MOM, Stop!!  My stomach hurts.  Can we sit down now...and all this before the second corner!!!  Remember how it used to feel, the anticipation of just the possibility of touching that longed for date and then the frustration when your sibling popped up, out of nowhere, right between the two of you.  URGH!!  So here I was, unsuccessfully trying to find that comfortable pace, that place where you are destined to encounter that runner's high...only to be repeatedly pulled away just as I caught a glimpse of it.  What could I do?  I put my arm around her and we did the "bump" all the way home.  The good news is that the shoes felt good and it has been a long time since she and I have laughed that hard.  With any luck I have brought her one step closer to finding her own reasons to enjoy running...

Muffin Topless

I am a 43 year old woman attempting to rekindle my love affair with running.  It has been 10 years, 2 children (beautiful & amazing), 2 broken metatarsals, and one fractured fibula since I have given this relationship any serious attention.  I have attempted to rendezvous occasionally but alas, the battle cry of most moms, “My needs just never seemed as important”.   This changed suddenly when one of my dearest friends called me “Muffin”.  This particular friend has called me this for years as she is older than me and for a period of time, was proud of rubbing that in (funny how life turns that against you later!) by using enduring, yet youth emphasizing, nicknames and among them, “Muffin” seemed her favorite.  But for some reason, this particular time “Muffin” felt more like an observation than an enduring nickname.  YIKES…  That’s the day I decided this relationship is important and searched the darkest recesses of my mind (what remains, anyway) and attempted to recall all the positive things I used to love about this relationship.  After looking at old photos and reading old journals, I was able to recall that it added excitement, adventure, and vitality to my life in a way that it seems very little else is able to rival.  Vitality, adventure, and excitement were certainly old friends that I would love to reconnect with, so it was decided, I would work to constantly remind myself of the good things that I missed about this former lover.

My first step was to plaster the word “MUFFIN” on my bathroom mirror and then to go buy new running shoes.  In an attempt to avoid insufferable guilt if “life” got in my way again, I went to the clearance rack at my favorite running shoe store.  And, as lady luck (who decided luck was a lady…since this is my story, the role of lady luck will be played by a stud placed on this earth to anticipate and grant my every desire, I will call him, Severino)  would have it they had a good shoe for my foot type and it was in my size (always a success promoter).  That was all I needed to get started.

I stuck with my plan and after a few well timed complements from girlfriends (where would we be without our girlfriends), I began to see less of my “Muffin”.    After about 6 weeks in these shoes I decided I was serious enough and deserved my favorite running shoe.  I really agonized about the $100.00 that they were bound to cost; was I worth it, what if I quit…you all know the song!!  I said “Screw it”, I work hard, I am valuable, and I can buy myself new running shoes.   So the quest began.  I know what shoe I love (or have loved in the past) and went back to the same favorite running shoe store to exert my new found personal strength….YIKES those babies cost $125.00…ON SALE!!!  And the colors were hideous!!  Mortified, I considered giving up, but with “Muffin” taking up room in my head and refusing to pay rent, I devised a plan.  I hate that running shoe consumers are bent over daily in Honolulu so in a blatant act of defiance I ran straight to the internet.  I searched for all of 15 minutes before I found exactly what I was looking for…at a fraction of the price!!!  A word of caution, the shoes are last years’ colors so please go easy on me girls, my “slave to fashion” days have been twisted into submission and have given way to “slave to practicality” days; a sign of age I am willing to live with.  At the risk of having my fashionista card revoked, I will tell you that I actually prefer last years’ colors.  But alas, I digress.

After nearly 2 weeks of agonizing waiting, courtesy of the US Postal Service (next time I will pay the extra $10.00 for FedEx), my new shoes finally arrived.  Today is the big day, my first day with the new, foot cradling, sexy shoes. As I laced up these beauties  I had visions of my old body flash before my eyes, and with a ounce of anticipation and a smile on my face, I set  off to meet my old lover.  The first 5 minutes were just as I remembered; my foot hitting the pavement and the beautiful angels in the shoes painlessly pushing my foot back up, only to continue this beautiful dance over and over again.  Jolted from my bliss, I saw a creature rear his ugly head, did I remember this thing?  I searched my memory banks and realized this creature was familiar, he was the numbing of my 4^th metatarsal…who invited him, I wondered.  It took another moment or two but it all came flooding back to me, like my personal patronus warding off the demontors attempting to sabotage my progress, my sexy new Muffin Eliminators were tied too tight at the mid-foot.  I was in such a blissful space, I hated to stop and tend to the ugly beast but, like a crying child in the middle of a much needed sexual evening, I could not ignore it any longer.  I stopped and adjusted my shoes.  This seemed to set a fascinating pattern for the remainder of my run…find a good groove, adjust the shoes, find another good groove, adjust the shoes.  Funny how memories of the wonderful high, the tight, lean body persist like neon signs but somehow the mundane chores like finding just the right tautness of those kolohe strings just gets lost in the shadows of the neon glow.  By the end of the path I had established for myself, the shoes seemed to be tied just right. 

We will see tomorrow…