life

My first half marathon!

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Sunday, I ran the Detroit Free Press International Half Marathon for the first time, it was also my first half marathon. I started the race with Bobby, his brother Jon, and my friend Lacy. As far as official races, I’d only ever done 5k races before this. As far as training, the furthest I’ve run this year is just under 6 miles, and only once. I hadn’t run any other races this year. Needless to say, I was incredibly nervous to run this race that I signed up for about 10 months ago. When I registered back in January, I figured I’d have plenty of time to train, and I did. The problem is finding/making the time to train properly. I think I just didn’t try hard enough.

That said, I am very happy with my race results. Aside from water stations, and snapping a few photos, I didn’t stop running until after 10 miles in. Let me tell you, I was very surprised that I managed that. Not only had I not run very far previous to the race, but it was also very cold. Thankfully, I managed to dress very well for the race. I finished 13.1 miles in 2 hours and 20 minutes. I definitely surprised myself with that time.

As with a lot of things lately, I learned some things about myself and was reminded of others. I learned that when I’m determined, I can do a lot more than I think I can. I learned that smiling can make all the difference to help push through non-injury pain and discomfort. As a lot of snarky signs reminded me, I paid to run this race. Those snarky signs were some of the things that made me smile. The spectators all along the route were wonderful. Whenever I saw children holding their hands out for high fives, I went out of my way to pop over and give them high fives. I know that, as a kid, it would make my day if someone did that. Actually, I gave everyone high fives, I just went out of my way for the kids. High fives are fantastic. I also reminded myself that I don’t need a soundtrack to run, apparently I don’t get bored easily. I ran the vast majority of the race alone with no headphones. Lacy broke away pretty quickly, Bobby’s brother didn’t take too long to take off, I stuck with Bobby for a bit, but I pretty soon broke away. That was a bit momentous for me because we usually stick together during races, but since I had done more training, I really wanted to see how well I could do and I wasn’t ready to stop running. So, I kept going, and I’m glad I did.

There was one almost terrible thing that happened. As I ran down the road from the tunnel after coming back from Canada (the uphill coming out of that tunnel was BRUTAL and I was feeling rough), I saw a man lying on the ground with people all around him, one of whom was giving him chest compressions. I was so jarred by that, and I wondered the whole rest of the race if that guy was okay and hoping with everything I had that he was. Lacy sent me an article later on that said that he was fine, most likely thanks to the people who stopped to help him and the speedy first responders. I realize anyone would be concerned, but I’m not exaggerating when I say I started crying a little bit.

I honestly didn’t realize how much endurance I have until this race. Like I said at the top, I haven’t done any other races this year, and I hadn’t run nearly far enough to be properly trained for this, but after I had run 10k of the course, I felt fantastic and I made a goal of running the entire thing. At about mile 10, my hips started becoming very sore and my legs were fatiguing, so I switched my goal to finishing as strong as I could, but not being upset if I needed to walk because I didn’t want to risk injuring myself by going too hard. All in all, I’m very happy with how I did. I got over the finish line in a pretty decent time, got my medal and my food, put my jacket back on, plopped down on a curb and ate the most delicious banana and drank the most amazing chocolate milk ever. Then I texted Lacy and found her and Jon, and we chilled at the after party with our coffee until Bobby arrived just under an hour after me. I also ran into a friend and former co-worker and chatted for a bit, which was really cool and unexpected. I already know that I want to do this race again next year with the goal of training better and being able to beat my time. I don’t know what it is, but I love running, and this race was exhilarating. I think I’ve experienced this runner’s high that I hear so many people talk about. It was such a surreal experience, more than I was even prepared for. The self-discovery, the accomplishment, the awesome scenery both in Detroit and Canada, the wonderful volunteers and spectators, being there with people I care about, everything was just so fantastic.

The past week, but mostly weekend

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I want to start off by saying thank you to everyone who expressed support and sent positivity my way after reading my posts about what I was going through emotionally recently. That was not my intention, to make people feel they need to compliment me, but it was very much appreciated. I really just wanted to put it out there for both myself, and for anyone else who might feel that way and just needs to know they aren’t alone. If I can help just one person, that makes me happy. I originally set out to do a blog just to have a place to write for myself, to have a record of not just mundane life, but about Lukas as he grows, about mine and Bobby’s adventures together and with Lukas, and about the hobbies that I’m into. When I started writing those first posts, though, I decided to share them since not only had they gone in a direction I wasn’t really planning on, but I felt like maybe, hopefully, someone else could benefit from something I have to say. I really struggled with whether or not to share those things, and as soon as I shared it, I immediately felt self-conscious about assuming that anyone could benefit from things that I say. However, I received nothing but support. I have almost a constant confidence battle with most things. Anyway, if you’re here reading, thank you. Onward to new things!

There was not a whole lot of eventfulness during the week last week, aside from FINALLY watching the end of the last season of Doctor Who. Just business as usual, working on websites, coming home to my beautiful family in the evening and doing a wide array of things before it’s time to put little man to bed and having a couple hours with Bobby before it’s time for us to go to bed. Although, Wednesday was apparently party day for me. We celebrated Jeff’s birthday at work by leaving the office early and going to Royal Oak Brewery. Then, Bobby and I picked Lukas up from daycare/school, went to Bobby’s parents’ house for dinner, and then left for Oxford to have a couple of beers with our friend Mike for his birthday. My belly was not happy with me the next morning, but I had a wonderful time at both celebrations.

Friday after work was pretty great. We took Lukas down to play with another little boy who lives in the neighborhood and hopefully we made new friends. We have quite a bit in common, at least initially, with our neighbors, and even though Lukas is a year older, the boys played swimmingly aside from the typical toddler spats. Lukas impressed me with how polite he was and how well he played with someone younger than he is. My favorite thing, and also a little heartbreaking because the other boy didn’t hear him, was when Lukas said ‘Please, can I have another piece?’ (asking for another block). It was so sweet. The boys got into a little spat caused by Lukas, Lukas took off down the yard upset, and as Bobby was walking back with him asking him what he thinks would make the other little boy feel better, the other boy ran up to him and hugged him and Lukas said he was sorry. I think we’re teaching him pretty well. After he went to bed, we had our Friday Pathfinder gaming session. August was an insanely busy month for everyone, so this was the first time in over a month that we were able to play our campaign. It was a lot of fun, very story driven, which I like. I may post a recap of the gaming session from my character’s point of view sometime soon.

Saturday morning was pretty productive, I went for my first morning run in quite a long time and it was great, we worked on cleaning the house and Lukas played outside for a while. He actually napped for so long after playing that we had to wake him up to go to Ian’s Rib-Off celebration. When I put him down for his nap, I told him that if he wanted to have fun at a party with a bounce house, he needed to sleep. It worked! While he took a nap, though, I kind of fell apart. After a week of the awful feelings I was having being gone, they returned with a vengeance. Thankfully, I had Bobby to myself to help me through it while Lukas was sleeping. I felt okay enough afterward to go to the party, but in the middle of the party, I started to feel really self-conscious and awkward, and not at all like I wanted to be around people I didn’t know very well. I managed okay, anyway, I think. Bobby got to judge ribs, so he was in heaven. Lukas charmed everyone, as usual. It sounds funny, but watching him eat ribs was awesome, he just tears in, that little guy definitely loves barbecue. I’ll hopefully be getting pictures that someone took of him. I followed Lukas around and played with him while Bobby was judging ribs. We came home from the party, put Lukas to bed and pretty much went right to bed ourselves because I was still feeling a little emotionally rough and it was late enough that I felt okay with going to bed.

Sunday, as is our weekend tradition, we went out for breakfast. We typically go to Clawson Grill, but we decided to treat ourselves this weekend and go to our favorite breakfast place, Frittata. That was a fantastic decision, as we knew it would be. I’m so glad they didn’t stay closed for long. After breakfast, we went to the bike shop so I could finally get some bike shorts, and I needed to replace my broken helmet and torn up gloves. I don’t know how, but the adjuster on my helmet snapped recently, so before I could ride again, I needed to replace it. All of that new stuff went to great use almost immediately when we decided to go for a nice ride. We didn’t know where we were going, but found ourselves heading for Ferndale. Bobby texted his boss to meet up since he lives in Ferndale, we stopped at b. nektar for a few minutes, bought some mead, and we had lunch and beers with Bobby’s boss and his wife at the WAB. They were really awesome to chat with and they were great with Lukas, always a plus. We rode back and went to our friend’s party for a bit before calling it a night and getting home to get Lukas to bed. We watched last year’s Doctor Who Christmas Special, a couple episodes of Bojack and then went to bed.

Today was pretty much all productivity. We got up, had breakfast, went to Lowe’s to get another house plant and some light switches, and then came home to do some cleaning. Bobby’s mom came and took care of Lukas for us while we went to the gym, we had a great workout, came home and hung out with his mom for a bit before dinner. I did some more cleaning while Bobby took Lukas to the park, I gave Lukas a shower and took care of his bedtime routine so that Bobby could rest a bit, and now we’re just settling in for the last bit of our evening. I know, mundane, but it was a nice day, albeit super duper hot and humid. We wanted to go for another bike ride, but decided it was way too hot.

I was still feeling a tiny bit emotionally rough yesterday and today, but I think I pushed a lot of it out on Saturday. Saturday evening before we went to sleep, Bobby helped me with a bit of guided meditation. I think between him helping me get it all out earlier that day and that meditation, I went to sleep feeling a lot better. I’m still struggling a bit, and it probably doesn’t help that I’m a bit tired, but it’s getting better again. Nothing like a couple weeks ago when it was just one full week of feeling awful. I’m trying to pinpoint what I think it is, and I’m not sure. I put a lot of pressure on myself constantly about everything, and I think sometimes that just really wears on me and the pressure bursts into a thousand emotions.

Only sort of related, I haven’t knit much lately, and I need to remedy that. I can deal with a lot of stress with two needles and some string. Plus, I have a ton of things in my list that I want to knit. I need to finish my chevron scarf, make Bobby’s lobster claw mitts, myself a cardigan, and I promised Lukas a scarf, among a ton of other things.

I’m starting to think I may need to post more often so that my posts aren’t so massive. Especially when I get to wanting to write things that aren’t just daily life. We’ll see how this goes.

Monday…Not So Bad After All

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This post may seem odd on the heels of yesterday’s post, but bear in mind that yesterday’s post took me days to write, and to decide if I was actually going to write about the things that I did. It’s important for at least myself for me to write about those things, to have a record and see if I notice a pattern, or even to just be reminded if it happens again, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and that I’ll be okay.

Today was pretty great overall. It was a frustrating day at work because bug fixing for Internet Explorer is just awful. Note to front end devs, flexbox is super freaking awesome…if the only IE you have to worry about is 10 and up. It works swimmingly on Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. It’s a brilliant tool, but since we still need to support IE9 on most projects, it’s more complicated since that browser doesn’t support it. Oddly enough, though, I ended the day in a decent mood. The frustration didn’t really upset me like it has been. It also makes me feel good that my boss is confident that I can get better with programming to help with those projects coming up that don’t necessarily have a front end aspect. I will always prefer front end development, but I do get really excited when I do a programming piece and make it work, especially if there is a bit of a struggle and then a victory. I just really like solving puzzles, and both back and front end development are like weird puzzles that can be hard to solve.

Lukas was absolutely awesome this afternoon, all afternoon. He was in a very happy, fun, hilarious mood, and he didn’t end up in time out once. It was fantastic. I love his funny little personality so much. When I told him he couldn’t do or have something, and offered an alternative, he was very receptive. We took him to the gym to play while we worked out with our trainer, he loves it there. When I gave him a shower this evening, he was happy and decided he wanted to play with the water and dance and sing.

Mine and Bobby’s work out with our trainer this evening was great! It was only our second session, but the experience has been nothing but positive already. He started the session by telling us that we both look a little more lean than last week, which is awesome since we both managed to make it to the gym three times last week. We decided recently that we just need to try harder to be in shape, for nothing more than to just have some energy left after work at the end of the day to play with our rambunctious, daredevil 3 year old boy. Being thin and having muscle tone are just really great byproducts of working out and having the energy to be active. I have a half marathon to run in a month and a half, and I’m slightly terrified at how it’s going to go. Anyway, the workout was really awesome, he had more of an idea of our abilities this time and gave us some fun full body workouts to do during this session, and he gave us a routine to do throughout the week. He also recommended doing a morning fasted run on the weekend, since that’s an excellent fat burner. I used to only run first thing in the morning, but I just haven’t wanted to get up early enough. If I find I’m able to wake up earlier, I might start doing that again. It’s dark by the time Lukas is in bed now, and even though I live in a very safe, well-lit area, I’m not all about running by myself at night. Something about it just really freaks me out.

I got to chat with one of my best friends about her life in Boston tonight. I know she’s super happy, and that she’s doing great work at a job that she loves, but I miss her. Talking to her tonight was really nice, and made me realize I need to make time to go see her in Boston, it sounds lovely.

I kind of wonder if the negative wave of emotions I was feeling last week was a result of my hormones going nuts after starting a brand new workout routine. I haven’t weight trained in a long time, and I was way more active last week than I have been in a long time. I do have a history of struggling with negative emotions that I have a hard time pulling out of, but it’s very possible that it’s just a temporary chemical surge that caused it. I say that because I’m feeling awesome tonight, and just yesterday morning I was struggling with feeling very upset out of nowhere about nothing in particular. It also hit me really hard out of nowhere for seemingly no particular reason. Thankfully, it happens way less frequently than it used to, it’s been quite a while since it’s been that bad.

It could honestly be a multitude of things that helped. Writing about it may have helped, not only to get the negative stuff out, but also writing about how good I have it. Sometimes I have to remind myself that when there’s nothing in particular causing my sadness and self-confidence issues, I just need to look around at my family, my wonderful and supportive husband, my amazing little boy, my dogs, my job that I love, and my friends, and realize that things are good. I don’t know if this works for everyone, I’ve never been diagnosed with anything and I’ve never taken any medication for it, I just know that I get uncontrollably sad and negative sometimes, and it can take a little while to dig myself out of the pit of despair, so to speak. Bobby’s never-ending support always helps, he’s able to help me be objective, even when I don’t want to be. Maybe my body has balanced out since I worked out regularly last week. I really don’t know. I’m just glad that the terrible feeling I was having has receded, and that I had a pretty awesome start to the week.