Category Archives: Running

Giving Thanks. Running. This Whole Vegan Thang. Health.

Posted on 23 November 2011 | 1 comment

Since the first day of November, I have been posting on Facebook those things for which I am thankful. I have not been alone in this. Nearly every person on Facebook has posted about being thankful for something in this month. The thanks range from sickeningly sweet posts to random posts about being thankful for the ability to block people. I’ve tried to not waver too far in either direction. You can decide for yourself if you think I’ve gone thanksgiving crazy!

November 1: I am thankful for steadfast family and friends.
November 2: I am thankful for my soon to be acquired punching bag and boxing gloves.
November 3: I am thankful for Burris’s FCA huddle. What amazing students!
November 4: I am thankful for carbohydrates that will fuel tomorrow’s insanity.
November 5: I am thankful for the ability to even think about completing a marathon.
November 6: I am thankful for being able to recognize beauty.
November 7: I am thankful for students who are open to new ideas and who aren’t afraid to speak their minds.
November 8: I am thankful for coffee, vegetables, and wild rice and the farmers, truck drivers, and grocery store workers who bring them to us.
November 9: Today I am thankful for waking up.
November 10: I am thankful for falling asleep at 7 last night and waking up at 330 this morning. I think I could get used to that schedule. Maybe that’s why opening shift at Starbucks always worked so well for me!
November 11: I am thankful for all of those who choose to serve our country and to guard our liberties, even when they don’t necessarily agree with trivial wars or the choices made for them by their superiors.
November 12: I was thankful when all the sour milk smell was finally off of me after Harvest Fest. There are so many reasons I have never had children, and I think that smell is one of them.
November 13: I am thankful for the beauty with which we are surrounded. I saw two deer while I was running this morning; they ran on the trail with me for about 100 yards and then turned abruptly, jumped over the fence, and scampered up the hill.
November 14: I am thankful for my rainbow toe socks and cabbage/broccoli stir fry.
November 14: Again today, I am thankful for Julie M., who provides me with fresh herbs. Tonight I am making whole wheat linguine topped with butternut squash caramelized with sage and olive oil.
November 15: I am thankful for options. Being able to choose makes me happy.
November 15: I am thankful for the high school choir, who just kindly seranaded my classroom with a musical rendition of “Jabberwocky.” Only at Burris.
November 16: I am thankful for the small things: tootsie rolls, incense, Coke Zero, and gel pens. I am thankful for the big things: compassion, kindness, love, and peace.
November 17: I am thankful for Burris FCA. The faith of these students is amazing. And, we always have good breakfast.
November 17: I am thankful for driving and spending a weekend away. I am thankful for new babies and their beauty and innocence.
November 17: I am thankful for mini-vacations and for Chicago, the city that makes my heart sing.
November 18: I can think of nothing I am more thankful for than running to the end of Navy Pier watching the sun rise over Lake Michigan, then turning around to see the light shimmering off of the windows of all those skyscrapers. Natural and manmade beauty collide, and I love it.
November 19: I am thankful for family in all shapes, sizes, and relationships.
November 20: I am thankful for long drives and a nice comfortable bed at home.
November 21: I am thankful for two days until break, otherwise known as the grading marathon.
November 22: Today I am thankful for my Facebook friends. Some of you I barely know in real life, but you make my days better and my mind stronger. I am thankful for those of you who challenge my beliefs and for those of you who camp in the same thought camps that I do. I am also thankful for my students who come to my room early (or on their lunches, or during their study skills classes) every day to try to solve the puzzles my secret pal bought for me!
November 22: I am thankful for Faith Pennington-Serf. I always leave our meetings with sore abs from laughing so hard, and I never leave wondering why I am a teacher.
November 23: I am thankful for long walks by the river with my dogs. Two miles with the sun coming up and the river burbling is the perfect way to start a long day of grading.

Today, as I sit here typing this in Starbucks, I am also thankful for grace. I look around and realize that I don’t deserve any of the amazing blessings I’ve been given. I am so blessed, but it’s easy for me to lose sight of that blessing when I get bogged down in the rut of my days. I am not a Christian who tends to revel in her brokenness, so it strikes me when I find myself reflecting on how undeserving I am. I sometimes wonder how fair it is to even call myself a Christian anymore, but that’s a conversation for another time and another post.

I tend to try to live in the renewed life and love that we are given as new creatures in Christ, but I sometimes forget that everything is a gift. It’s humbling, you know, when I consider that I could have been born into any circumstance and grown up into any circumstance. But I wasn’t and I didn’t. I was born into an awesome family and given awesome friends. I was encouraged to grow up into a unique little snowflake. 🙂 Every day I am challenged and supported. Every day I am given grace and inspired. Every day I am loved and I love, which is a blessing.

All my problems are trivial and finite, but grace is significant and eternal.

*

My brother and I are running a 5K trail race on Saturday, and I am quite excited for it. Running has been going really well, since I didn’t finish the marathon. My mile times have been up to two or three minutes faster than they were leading up to the marathon, and my feet and legs haven’t felt heavy or tired for a couple of weeks. Since it’s gotten colder here, I haven’t done any real barefoot running (minimalist instead), but I am going to start going to the BSU track in Ball Gym to get in some serious barefoot miles. I have moved my running from the morning to the afternoon and that seems to have helped both my ability to deal with the early sunset, and my ability to run well. Maybe being more alert helps the speed. I am so not a morning person!

*

I am wavering back to my commitment to being vegan. I’ve had lots of dairy in the past two or three weeks, and I am starting to think that my body likes the extra protein. However, I can’t stand the fact that my consumption of dairy leads to the dairy farms we pass while driving in Wisconsin and Minnesota. I can’t stand to see so many animals jammed into such a small, muddy, shitty space with no fresh green grass or pasture. More disturbing are the veal huts set up on the opposite side of these farms. Little baby cows chained to tiny little huts, standing in straw and manure, mooing for their mommies. Yeah, I am a bit cheesy about stuff like this, but I can’t stand it. It breaks my heart, and I absolutely hate driving past the dairies. Then, when my gut is full of cheese or milk, I want to throw up at the fact that I am implicit in this operation. It makes me sick. Almost literally.

I suppose I just need to figure out how to get more protein while still being vegan. Maybe I could add in more nuts or beans. I know I need to get more fresh vegetables, so I am going to try a two-month juice fast from January 1 through the end of February. I am hoping to use that time as a time of bodily cleansing and intellectual purification before going back to being vegan. Of course, the juice fast will be vegan, but it will also be an exercise in discipline. And, of course, I will need to have it finished by the time Elizabeth, Sarah, and I embark on AWP in Chicago!

*

Last, but not least, I have started taking niacin and vitamin C again. The two nutrients are a homeopathic remedy for mood disorders, and since my mood swings have gotten out of control, I decided to take matters into my own hands and take some proactive measures to get things under control. I figure some niacin and some vitamin C is a whole lot cheaper than the $100 an hour a psychologist would cost. (It’s probably cheaper than going to court because I punched someone in the face, too.) Supposedly our insurance provides psychiatric care, but I imagine that it would be equally excellent coverage to our medical care, which is almost like not having insurance at all. Our pharmaceutical coverage is excellent, though, according to the pharmacist. Doctor $$$ > Drug $$$ = The health care system in the US is fucked.

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Posted in Christianity, Family, Fat, Food, Grace, Mental Health, New Year, Religion, Running, Vegetarian or Vegan

There Are So Many Other Things I Should Be Doing Right Now…

Posted on 13 November 2011 | Leave a comment

but I decided instead to write about my week this week. It was an excellent one. Last Sunday, I started taking my niacin/vitamin C again, and I can tell that it makes a huge difference. I haven’t thought once this week about killing myself or someone else. And the way things were going that is a huge step in the right direction.

I’ve also decided to try to remember that people can do whatever they want, but it only affects me if I let it, and usually people’s weird reactions and mean actions have little to nothing to do with me, but with their own state of mind and the other things happening in their lives. I’ve also thought quite a bit about passive aggressive behaviors and how there is no way to control the way other people act and react, and I can say, for this week at least, it worked to view my interactions with others in this manner. If I don’t let the mean things other people say and do interrupt what I am doing, they can’t get to me and make me feel bad about myself. I like that. There’s a saying, which can’t really be attributed to one source because so many famous people have shared the sentiment, that holds quite a bit of wisdom in this regard. It goes like this: “It’s not what happens to you that matters, but what matters is how you react to it.”  I am learning new ways to react, particularly when it comes to people whose actions are abusive or detrimental to my character.

Running has been really good this week. On one of my runs, I somehow managed to run a ten-minute mile after running weeks and weeks of 13- to 14- minute miles. And, today I ran 5 miles at the Mounds on some hilly, rocky, uneven terrain at about a 14-minute mile pace. I wore my nice VFF Trek Sports that have the little, baby lugs for trail running, and they have a bit thicker sole than the classics. These have become my go to shoes for anything that isn’t on the sidewalk or street. My classics serve me well when the pavement is too rough or when the weather is too cold. I have a pair of Flows, too, but I really don’t like them very well at all. They are stiff and my feet get sweaty hot in them, which I assume will be a huge plus when the snow falls and the ice comes. For right now, though, the weather is still good enough that they are bit overkill. I wear them to school sometimes, and my students call them my dress shoes!

Not finishing the marathon has somehow lit a fire under my behind to make it impossible for myself to fail in the spring when I sign up for the next go at it. I am thinking of running an early spring marathon before the pollen starts up. It’ll be challenging to strike the delicate balance between cold air and pollen, both of which are not so great for my lungs. At any rate, I am feeling pretty good about my running life. I’m trying to lose some weight before then, too, but I am not sure how well that will go. I seem to have difficulty ever losing weight, and I just get discouraged if that’s my focus. I have to remember that running and feeling fit are my first priorities. Losing weight is like third or fourth fiddle to all the other things I do for my body.

To that end, the weight loss, I’ve decided to start eating milk products again. Despite how morally reprehensible the whole dairy industry is, I think I need the extra protein that low-fat milk and low-fat cheeses provide me. I am trying not to add back in too many animal products, but only those which I feel my body needs to maintain the weekly mileage I am trying to achieve; I’d like to be at a maintenance level of 17 to 30 miles each week by Christmas, running 3 to 5 miles on weekdays and  5 to 10 miles on weekends. That’s definitely doable, and it will make running a marathon seem like something more attainable without making the training seem like a drudgery. Don’t get me wrong, I love running, but the training (especially the 50-mile week) was a bit challenging to complete during school.

Also, it’s my goal to run at least one race each month this year. I am starting with the Leftover Turkey Trail Run on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, then running the Santa Hustle on December 17 and the Rudolph Run on Christmas Eve. Now I have to find a good race for January. 🙂

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Posted in Fat, Food, Goals, Mental Health, Running, Vegetarian or Vegan

Last Minute Jitters Turn Into Legitimate Concerns

Posted on 8 November 2011 | 2 comments

Menses alert (like a spoiler alert, but more important): As if it wasn’t enough to attempt to move my fat body 26.2 miles, I get to do it while Mother Nature does her thing to my uterus. Thanks, lady, you’re supposed to be on my side. You are a woman after all!

If nothing else, though, I have plenty to think about on this 6-hour journey. I can replay recent disappointments with friends to investigate what I have done to offend. I can revel in recent—and fantasize about future—growths in my professional life. I can contemplate my (partially) new-found spirituality, reviewing the texts I’ve been reading as I run. I will repeat a mantra: “Just keep swimming.” I can pray for personal and universal plights and rejoice over successes. I can consider social justice issues and the ways in which I can . And, if I finish, I will feel like I’ve accomplished something big.

*

Well, it’s the Tuesday after the marathon, and I didn’t finish. I didn’t accomplish something big. This time. I was going strong until mile 10 when I noticed my chest starting to tighten up, and I started to have a difficult time breathing. I’ve run 15-mile training runs, so there should have been no problem. But there was.

I don’t have a formal asthmatic diagnosis, unless you count the exercise-induced one from when I was still young enough to go to the pediatrician, so I hate it when I can tell my lungs are starting to spasm and constrict. I can’t do anything to fix it because I don’t have an inhaler. By the time I turned onto Pennsylvania Avenue, I could tell I wasn’t going to last much longer. Maybe it was the gingko trees, maybe it was my imagination, but my breathing was difficult. I started crying, and then I started walking. I made it to mile 11 where I promptly got scooped up by the slow wagon.

*

I learned a lot about myself through this huge disappointment. I know I need to start my allergy shots, and I am hoping I am part of the 50% of the population they work for. I know I need to train much more diligently and much more thoroughly for the next go around. I know could stand to lose some weight, which would only make running 26.2 miles a little less painful. I know I need to be more careful about what I eat between now and then, maybe adding in a bit more protein and fewer “treats.”

I learned I need to give myself more grace when shooting for lofty goals, like I need to give myself grace for not having time to work on my dissertation. I learned I need to count on my friends and family who are steadfast and true and revel in their love for me.

I don’t know what else to say about this whole journey, except that I lost it on Saturday when I stopped running. The bottom of my world fell out, and all those dark feelings came rushing in and I was drowning. I came back (or to put it evangelically, I was redeemed) when I decided that not making a goal I set for myself isn’t the end of the world, and that I always have next time. Sounds trite, sounds clichĂ©, sounds sickeningly like something I wouldn’t want to hear, but it’s true. I don’t have a terminal illness. I am not incapacitated in some way. There is always tomorrow.

While I was running,  I thought a lot about the legacy I want to leave behind, and the one I was heading toward leaving behind wasn’t exactly it. Recently, I have spent way too much time wallowing in self-pity. I haven’t spent nearly enough time thinking about, dwelling on those things I have to rejoice about. For my legacy, I want to leave behind peace and compassion, not anxiety and anger. I may not be happy in every situation, but I can still be grace-filled and experience each moment for what it brings.

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Posted in Dissertation, Fat, Goals, Grace, Running, Vegetarian or Vegan

Running a Trail-Half. Grading. Grant. Periods, period.

Posted on 24 September 2011 | 1 comment

I am totally stoked—though my other half just said her usual, “Okay”—to be running my first trail half-marathon next Sunday, October 2. As usual, I hope I haven’t bitten off more than I can chew, but since I’m not vain nor afraid of coming in last, I’ll do what I always do when I run by just putting one foot in front of the other until I cross the finish line. There really is no time-limit for this guy: it’s starts at 8:05 and ends at 4:30, so I should be in tip-top shape for finishing before they pull the plug. Since the marathoners and all the other races use the same trail, they keep it open for six and half hours, which means I might finish about the same time and in the same location as the fastest marathoners. Weird. But, I will finish. I mean, I am slow, but not that slow. If it’s anything like the Mounds, I may not even come in last. If the terrain is the same/similar as the Mounds, I should be able to finish in 3:30 to 3:45. The real reason I am so excited is that I hope this will boost my confidence for the marathon in a few short weeks. I still have about six long runs with the longest falling in two more weeks: twenty miles! I plan to run to my parents house to have them drive me back home. I suppose first I should focus on the ten-mile run tomorrow morning, eh?

I had to have silver lining this evening by signing up for the trail run, because I spent 6.5 hours at school today, grading, grading, grading. After I run in the morning, I’ll go back and grade some more. I finished all of the middle school objective tests, but I still need to grade their essays. Tomorrow I will finish my high school reflections, essays, objective tests, and anything else that needs to be caught up for them. I plan to get up at around 6 to run so I can get all my grading finished before spending the afternoon with my brother to work on our application for this grant.

We’re applying for grants to go on a two-week long tour of the midwest and the east coast to watch minor league baseball games. Apparently, the grant is aimed toward enabling teachers to plan their dream trip, a trip they’d never be able to do without the grant. We knocked around several different trips (Caribbean, New Orleans, Pacific Northwest, cross-country road trip) and decided on driving to 6 different minor league ball parks. We’ll watch the games, and my brother will take photographs while I interview people about their memories of baseball and their preference for minor league games. For some reason, my head thinks we’ve already won the grant, because I feel like we’re headed out for the trip already. I’m so excited. Okay?

What I am not excited about is living with another woman who has a regular period. I had gotten used to Bec’s non-schedule and was enjoying skipping a month now and again, but E has strong hormones, apparently, because now I am in sync with her. Sad day. I wondered why I’d been so grumpy, craving weird foods, and feeling fat all week long. Now I know.

I’m not a very good feminist, because if I was I’d revel in my period as some sign of mutual femaleness shared around the world. I’d celebrate my ability to procreate and honor my uterus with monthly praise. But, I don’t. Ever since the damn thing started when I was in eighth grade, I’ve wanted it to end. When I was younger, I wanted it to end because of sports and the occasional pregnancy scare. Now I just want it to end because it mocks me with my childlessness every month. Mother Nature is an unrelenting tease: you’re not pregnant, and you never will be. I say to her, “You can stop now, MN. I’m over it.”  She just laughs back every 28 to 30 days with her own little curse.

 

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Posted in Feminism, Goals, Grace, Relationships, Running, School, Teaching, Vegetarian or Vegan

Funk. Dissertation. Running. Vegan.

Posted on 21 September 2011 | Leave a comment

My funk has been clinging to me like the flesh to the pit of a peach for about six months now. I see no way out. I go through every day trying to fake happiness and trying to pretend like everything is okay, but I know some people see through it. It started in June when I was, theoretically, working on my dissertation and it clings on, even through today. I have tried all those things that one tries when prying the peach off the pit. I’ve pulled. I’ve pried. I’ve done everything short of pulling out a knife to scrape it off. It’s stuck here.

(Dont’ worry about me, though, because I am trying to use a combination of vitamins, Christian thought and prayer, Buddhist thought and meditation, and solid nutrition combined with exercise to get back into a good headspace. I will get the funk off if it kills me!)

The funk began when I realized I couldn’t write about my chosen topic for my dissertation, because it was too intensely personal. Who knew I couldn’t just whip off a couple hundred pages about spirituality, sexuality, and wholeness. As if being fragmented for so long would lend itself to writing about wholeness! I began this topic in earnest a year ago, but teaching middle school and high school does not lend itself to writing a dissertation. The students are so needy, and I have such a desire for them to learn well, that I pour my whole self into them and tend to leave nothing for myself.

Many of my professors might say that teaching will take care of itself, and that I would be wise to invest in myself for a change, but would they still say that if their own child sat in my class. Would they want their child’s teacher putting herself before their child? I can say with unwavering certainty, the answer is no. Each parent believes that his or her own precious darling deserves the best from a teacher, and I agree. If I had a child, would I want his or her education coming at the hands of a person who had spent the night before reading Foucault and food theory, rather than reading the chapters I had assigned their students to read, so s/he could lead a decent discussion or plan a thought-provoking activity? Um, no. I would want my child’s teacher to work hard to teach my child. So, needless to say, I don’t get much done in the way of dissertation work during the school year.

That being said, I am in the process of changing my dissertation topic, so I have to have a new proposal to my director here very shortly. Since I go home from school each night and work three to four more hours on lesson planning and grading, I want to know how it is that I thought I could get this proposal written? What was I thinking? In my head, I see how it works out. The topic is food in ethnic American novels. The chapters have to do with cultural (ethnic) discipline, spiritual discipline, an sexuality/gender discipline as it is evidenced through food and meals. I got the idea when, at my wits end, I received a package in the mail this summer from my friend Rachel. These two books were my birthday present: The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist Vegetarian Critical Theory and From Betty Crocker to Feminist Food Studies: Critical Perspectives on Women and Food. I had already been considering a topic change and this idea had been ruminating for  a while (it had been a small part of the original dissertation topic), so the books seemed like some Divine confirmation of the change. As soon as I get a few minutes to myself, I plan to start writing my new proposal. I’ve been researching and I feel hopeful.

I have been sick for a few days with what I assume can only be allergies. I didn’t write about it because I was otherwise occupied, but over the summer I found out that I am allergic to pretty much everything inside and outside, except cedar trees and mold. I am very allergic to dust, insect stings, and ragweed. Probably the ragweed is my current nemesis, but I digress. The worst part about being sick is that I am training for the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon on November 5, which is forty-four days away, and I haven’t been able to run for about a week. The last long run I did was 15 miles, and it went really well as I was able to finish close to my goal time. I am hoping that November 5 will be cold and dry. The colder, the better. Last years race started at 20 degrees, which would be ideal for a big girl like me! I was hoping to run it barefoot, but I am planning, instead, to run in my Vibram Five Fingers. I just want to finish the course this year, and after this one, I plan to try to get faster.

I suppose that running really helps with my level of stress, too, unless I am training for an event. When I have a training plan to follow, I stress about missed runs, I stress about not getting faster, and I stress about what I am eating. Am I getting enough protein? Am I getting enough carbs? Am I running too much or too little? Am I eating too much junk food? Will missing a week of runs make me not finish? Sometimes it seems like just another stressor, but then I go out and run, and I hear that Kshkshksh sound and all seems right with the world. My breathing is good, my legs feel strong, and my feet lightly touch the pavement with each repetition. And, I just feel good. I feel like the funk, the drudgery slip out of my flesh, just like the pit of the freestone peach. I feel freestoned.

I’ve been vegan for a bit over a year now (off-and-on vegetarian/vegan for close to 20 years), and I love it most of the time. I’m not one of those vegans who pretends that now I have some grand moral compass that disallows me to experience cravings for particular foods. I have had a serious pork craving for about three weeks now. I fantasize about chowing down on some big ol’ QL’s pulled pork BBQ sandwich on white bread with some hot sauce. I fantasize about making some ribs on the grill with my own hot orange BBQ sauce. I fantasize about slicing into a huge oven-baked pork chop and dipping it into Heinz 57 on the way up to my mouth for a seriously decadent treat. I say all that to make it sound less horrible when I tell you that I ate 3/4 of a cheese, mushroom, and spinach frozen pizza last night. I followed it up with ice cream. It was my first intentional non-vegan moment (not counting in WI on vacation where there is no food without cheese) in more than a year. And, while my body enjoyed it, my conscience did not. I had dreams about dairy cattle, their babies, and veal farms. I thought about calling up some local dairies and asking if they sell their calves to veal farms, so I could make a conscientious choice to steer clear of the whole nasty dairy farm back-story that no one ever wants to talk about.

Peace, yo.

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Posted in Buddhism, Children, Christianity, Dissertation, Feminism, Food, Goals, Relationships, Religion, Running, School, Teaching, Vegetarian or Vegan, Writing