It Snowed Last Night

It snowed last night. This morning I bundled up and stepped outside. The air was fresh. The world around me was muffled. I strapped on my snowshoes and headed out into the snow-splashed woods. All around me the beauty of winter showed its best side. A splash of red marked the flight of a Cardinal. A loud chatter sounded from the branches above me as a gray squirrel greeted the day. I came to the big oak tree and stopped. I placed my hand on the rough bark and smiled. Sometimes life is this simple, serene and free from conflict.   

A Year of Running

This year I will be running my first marathon!  I am excited and little intimidated by the idea of running twenty-six miles. I decided to do this for a couple of reasons.

First, I have always loved running. As a child I ran everywhere. Then adulthood happened with its many demands, schooling, working, childrearing, and just taking care of the vast assortment of obligations, scheduling, home maintenance and did I mention childrearing, leaving me with little time to pursue any hobby of my own. After my children left home I joined my daughter in running and the joy I felt as a child was rekindled. I ran several 5ks and even got my husband into the sport for a season.

Then I had a car accident and suffered a broken nose and concussion. Over the next four years I struggled with severe headaches after any kind of physical exertion, both cardio and strength training. I would be woken up in the middle of night with sharp, stabbing pain in my temples and across my forehead. The next day would be a day of very little activity and ibuprofen. Sometimes the headache would linger for a week or more making it difficult to get much of anything accomplished. During this time I was receiving treatment from a chiropractor and went through physical therapy and the frequency and intensity of my headaches slowly diminished, allowing me to do more, but not disappearing completely. My oldest daughter then talked me into trying an eating program called the Whole 30, basically giving up processed foods, grains, soy and dairy, which she had found made a big difference in how she felt. After two weeks of faithfully following the plan I discovered the final piece to my headaches, dairy. Now I love dairy, I can’t imagine a world without cheese, especially on pizza, but it was hard to argue with the evidence. Eat dairy, suffer headaches due to inflammation of my sinuses. Do not eat dairy and be headache free, but what about pizza on Friday night? There are a few dairy free cheese substitutes out there, though they aren’t quite the same and my husband objected to the substitution. A bit of experimentation lead to the discovery that if I was dairy free all week I could have my regular pizza on Friday night. I would be a little lethargic on Saturday, but now I could run again. Yay! And I did a little bit here, a little bit there. I did some hiking and started to realize that even though I had lost fitness I could get it back. Which lead me to my second reason for running a marathon this year.

This is a milestone birthday year for me and I decided to something big for myself to celebrate. What better way to celebrate life than to work toward becoming as fit as I can. My daughter helped me set up a training program. It started with running a 5k in December and continues through the year with a 10k in March, a half marathon in May and a 20-mile race in September leading to running the Twin Cities Marathon in October. My husband, in a show of support, has committed to running with me. Now all I need to do is run.