Sunday afternoon…church over, groceries bought, baby fed, Lions winning…time for a run.
Lacing up my sneaks and shoving in my earphones (that are too big for my ears), I dash out the door. Time is a precious commodity around here, as is daylight, so it is now or never. My handy dandy Couch to 5K iPhone application tells me that I am supposed to run 25 minutes without stopping. Hmm…the longest run so far. I muster up a serious game face and start down the street..
As I get into a rhythm…four steps as I breathe in…four steps as I breathe out…my mind wanders back to the last time I ran on a regular basis. It was a little over 10 years ago, when I was playing soccer in college. While I was home for the summer, I would run around the neighborhood to get in shape for the fall season.
At the time, I was working two jobs – Aeropostale during the day and Abbott’s, the local frozen custard shop, at night. I went to the YMCA early in the morning to lift weights, and I would run in the afternoon in between jobs. I distinctly remember throwing on some soccer shorts and a t-shirt, firing up my portable CD player, and alternating between jogging and sprinting as I weaved my way through the neighborhood surrounding my parent’s house.
I flash back to the present, which is probably a good thing, because I need to focus on getting myself to the top of the long sloping hill leading up to my turnaround point. It doesn’t seem like much of an incline when I’m tooling along in my Odyssey, but to these legs, it feels like Mount Everest.
Things have definitely changed in the past ten years…
While I feel like I’m running to beat the band, I have a sneaking suspicion that to the casual observer, it may actually look like I’m trucking along at a fast walk. Sprinting has been relegated to miniscule bursts when I’m playing soccer in my women’s over-30 league and the last 100 feet before home. I still listen to music, but it thankfully isn’t reliant on whether or not the anti-skip mechanism works in my CD player.
But then, as I head back down the hill and start to cramp up, some of the similarities pop into my mind. I may possibly be wearing the same t-shirt. I listened to DC Talk back in college, and today I am listening to TobyMac – go figure. And no matter how good of shape you are in, there is always that point where your body starts begging you to stop.
It is at that point where you have to remember to focus on a point out in the distance, and not on the step right in front of you. It is the only way I make it back to our street…by making it to the next driveway…making it to the crosswalk…making it to our street sign. Every time I look down at my feet, I feel myself slowing down and losing my inner gusto. Instead, I look up and out and the minutes fly by.
I walk up the driveway to the house, waving to Parker who is peeking out the front door. Back to work…maybe not to dish out ice cream or sell clothes, but to serve dinner and fold clothes. Maybe not so different after all, huh? But when it feels like I have changed 20 poopy diapers in two hours or when my patience for whining has wore thin? I’ll have to remember that focus trick…to look out into the distance at the joys of being a parent instead of focusing on the day to day tasks that can drag me down.
Exercise…and philosophizing about life…how’s that for multitasking?
