RACING

Crisp Saturday morning. I'm standing with some friends, half stretching and half talking. Thousands mill around us, various versions of running apparel. It makes me think of my father, who picked me up this morning all snub-nosed with "You're gonna run in that?"
My father is always tied to my memories of running: feelings of adoration as we watched him from the streetside during marathons, running along next to him during my junior high years, or him on a bike next to me, coaching me as I ran. Memories of riding my bike alongside him, as he went on long runs, admiring the musculature of his thighs, thick and crab-like. My father was a strong man, and took physical fitness seriously. He was there at my first race, a mile in length, when I was maybe twelve. He was there at the end of my first cross country race when I was thirteen. For a long time I remembered my dad as being somewhere in the shadows, but this was the place he was at, the place of races.
Today it's race day, and I am not really sure I prepared well for this. I had the one decent run with C at the neighborhood track, but I was relying on my time with Britney to get me through. I wasn't even really thinking about it this morning, though, as I was having a heart to heart with a girl pal. We found our place where we thought we might be, time wise. I remembered to stretch my calves, always the tightness that would slow me down in a race. We heard the jubilant sounds of the first race kicking off. Then the line moved up. We moved up.
"We're going now," she says to me, as both of us are getting our Ipods on. I thought about the last time I did this race, with my sister. I didn't have any music that time, just our conversation. This would be good, I thought.
I had no idea, though, how that was gonna work out for me. If I had known, I would have lined myself up in a different spot. For very quickly, as we got into it, I turned to my friend. "This is the wrong tempo," I said. "Do you mind if I go?"
"Go on," she waved me on. And I took off, at the intensity I was dancing at those late nights in my living room.
The problem was, I couldn't go as fast as I wanted. There were too many people around. People all around me, moving next to me, people streetside. Too many people all up in my business. This was an obstacle I had to get around. I began a little game of thread-the-needle. The focus became finding the opening, finding the time to slip between bodies in motion.
I started to worry a little about what the people streetside were seeing. I don't know why that was even bothering me. It reminded me of my self consciousness dancing in my living room, a silly idea to even worry about what you looked like when you were alone. So I decided to deal with it the way I dealt with it then. Block it out. Put your blinders on. Come in deeper. Get inside my mind.
So I went in there, to this place inside where it was just my mind, and the music. In my mind, I always decided to be the star. I just decided to run with it. The problem is, I still couldn't run fast enough. I could only go as fast as opportunity presented itself. There were a whole lot of people in my way, too many people, too many obstacles. Gimme more, gimme more...I was ready to go.
I thought about how different this was from last time I did this race, remembered points along the route where my sister had been wanking out, wanting to walk. Finally, at one point, she broke. If I keep it up, I'm gonna be sick, she moaned. "I got to GO!" Go on, she waved at me, head down, defeated. I was stronger than that. This day, I thought about that race and wished I hadn't have stayed with her the whole time before that moment. I was stronger than that, so I should have just rolled with it.
Right after I passed the memory of this, I caught up with S, my best girl pal at work. There was hilarious girl drama this week about this race between her and our doc, who was also doing the race. S had left her a long time ago. I was full of it when I came up beside her, bumping her hip and messing around with her. "Let's go, girl!" I urged. She gave me an annoyed look, huffing with exertion. She was pushing it already. I tried keeping at her speed for a while, seeing if I could push the right buttons in her to make it a race already. We grabbed some water, walked a minute, tried to decided whether this was going to work out for us. I was willing to give her a chance, provided she could keep up.
The problem now was that we were coming up near the finish. I always got excited at the finish. We're not pacing it, we're racing it, I thought, as I neared the final turns. S wasn't feeling it, but I decided I didn't care. I had let too many others set the pace, this time I was gonna fly at my own speed and not feel a bit bad about it. I was tired of being held back.
And so I let it fly, and I didn't give a damn what anyone thought, not the people I was leaving behind, not the ones who were in my way, not the ones standing with cameras at the finish or those who were at the sidelines with bells and whistles. In the end, it was just me, racing to the finish line.

And my dad was there at the end, waiting to take me home.

HORSE POWER

I can't even remember when I started this love affair with horses. It was sometime before permanent memories started; somewhere mixed in with memories of sitting on my mother's lap listening to her read stories and being tucked in with my sister and brother. It was a part of my childhood legacy.

So, when I was five, I was given the choice between dance classes or horseback riding. Hard choice. ;) There were many, many years of lessons. Never a horse of my own, liked I dreamed, because my family wasn't THAT rich. There were years of horse camp and grooming other people's horses and dreaming of my own.

I knew I would find the right horse one day, and I thought many years of what this first horse would be like. I didn't make this dream come true until I was twenty one, and bought Bullseye my own damn self. Bullseye will always be "the horse of my heart", but, he is gone from my life.

So, my youngest child started asking for a "neigh" when he was about two, and I missed horses. I told Michelle about this lament often - I had ridden with her in high school, and she still had the same horses. Occasionally I would go riding with her, and I yearned. She told me this year that if I really wanted a horse again, "this is a good time to buy". The bottom fell out of the horse market due to the slaughter ban, and then the recession hit. Low-end horses were bottom dollar, people were practically giving them away.

So, that's kind of how I ended up with December. She was a bottom dollar price on a warm day. I chose her with the kids in mind, but it is me I think who is getting the most lessons.

I was thinking about that today when I was riding her. I was musing about the fact that I ride her bareback more than I rode Bullseye in that manner. I love bareback riding best of all, but I mostly always had a saddle on his back. Why does it seem like I do this more with her, I pondered. Well, it's a trust issue....

I tried to trust Bullseye , it's inherent in our story. However, over time our trust got broken. It's complicated. But December, bless her heart, I trust her. She is smooth as silk to ride, and completely unflappable.

Or so I thought. Ironically, five minutes after I thought that very thing about her, she DID spook at something, and at the worst moment - coming around a corner at a canter. Mind you, the arena is mostly mud right now. She sees something out of the corner of her eye, and makes a mad bolt to the right in fear.

But my body responds automatically without even having to think about it. Sit back, center myself, work the reins in her mouth to guide and calm her, heels down for balance, my seat on her bare back telling her to slow down, calm down, and go this way, and this speed....

I think the fact that I don't even have to think about it is amazing. It makes me think there is more strengths inside me that I haven't had the chance to use in a while, but it doesn't mean they have gone away. They've just been dormant, but when given the opportunity, they will come back just as automatically.

I think, that's it, that is one of the powers the horse has - to teach us to trust ourselves.

AGGIE ENGINEERING

It's a soft sunny summer evening in suburban Spring, and couples are sitting in chairs in open garages watching the world go by. I jog by one of these houses and a man nods at me.

"That's a pretty good idea you got there."

"Works pretty good!" I say. I jog on down the street, around the corner, then another corner, and yet another. A blonde woman in a sundress is unloading a pack of children from a minivan. She notices me coming and stops a moment.

"That's a nice piece of engineering you have there!" she says with a smile.

"It works pretty good." I say.

"Looks like it. That's a good idea!"

"Thanks! I like it."

Such a simple solution for a complicated problem. Who knew a leather dog leash would prove to be the thin line between procrastination and proactivity?

When I am in the "exercise zone", I always feel very frustrated with people who make excuses for why exercise doesn't fit into their life. I found myself in the position where I was making the same kind of excuses over the past year.

As a former girl jock, I always exercised because I wanted to. As a side benefit, it may have improved my appearance and given me inner and outer strength, but it was always motivated by the desire for activity and enjoyment. Exercise was something I wanted to do, not something I had to do. I haven't ever seen exercise as something imperative to my health until just this past year.

During my first pregnancy, I gained forty pounds, and due to life situation and a battle with depression, it took me three years to gain the inner fortitude to shed the baby weight. It took about a year of hitting the gym and counting calories, so I didn't want to let that hard work go. I had finally got to a weight lower than when I met my husband and was in a good place physically when I got pregnant again. This time I was determined to keep the weight gain to a minimum and get back to pre-baby shape as soon as possible afterwards. I exercised up until the last month of my pregnancy and began an exercise program a month after my baby was born.

It was going great the first six months or so. I worked nights and my husband worked mornings, so I had time to go spend two hours at the gym or run with the dogs most days of the week. I spent most of my children's waking hours with them, so I had no guilt about leaving for "My Time" spent exercising. I was halfway to my goal of reaching my pre-baby weight.

About a year and a half ago, I switched jobs, and now I have a one hour commute through rush hour traffic both ways. I spent eleven hours of my day five days a week away from home while somebody else is raising my kids. It is a great job and I don't regret the opportunity, but I have to accept some losses. From the time I get home until bedtime, I have four hours to spend with my children. I am not about to spend one or two of those hours in "My Time". That is way too much guilt for me to deal with. Our time together is always much too short and punctuated with homework, dinner, playtime, baths, and bedtime stories.

Between this guilt, the end of breastfeeding, and hitting the over 30 metabolism slowdown, I was beginning to feel the effects. Then my husband switched jobs and suddenly he was frequently working out of town or late hours, and getting out of the house for exercise became a remote possibility. We got rid of our gym membership because we just weren't going anymore. The dogs became lawn ornaments and had dim memories of what leashes were for. Suddenly, my clothes were getting tight, and only a quarter of my wardrobe was actually wearable.

This was becoming a problem. Through it all, I became increasingly concerned about my heart and the state of my health. I realized I was becoming one of those people I could never understand. I was making excuses for why I couldn't fit exercise in.

I tried to start dancing at night again (don't laugh, I swear this was responsible for at least twenty pounds I lost when my husband was in Iraq), but the stereo was broken and I am probably the only girl in the twenty first century without an Ipod. I tried running alternate sprints, jogging and walking from mailbox to mailbox while my children played outside, but the toddler wanted to join me and, well, he toddled. He either cried about being left behind or fell down and got ow-wies. I tried jumping rope but after having two kids...this just doesn't work (right, Rachael?).

Then I started thinking. I might not have gotten an engineering degree, but I did go to A&M. I should be able to come up with a system for running with my kids, hands-free. The toddler has no patience for the stroller anymore. That's out. He does love to ride in his red wagon, though. Who can run while pulling a red wagon with one hand, though? Of course, you could say, why run, just walk with it. This goes back to the argument Dr Boynton and I used to have about whether or not you burn the same number of calories walking the same distance as you do running. I still say no. It is fun, but it takes me twice as long and I swear it does nothing for me. I need to get my heart rate higher than that.

I experimented a few times before I got it just right. Drop the loop end of the leather dog leash through the handle of the wagon, run the clip end through the loop, then pull this tight across the waist until the end of the handle rests snug up against the lower back, then fasten the clip to the closest length of leash and there you are, hands-free. This way I can use my arms and keep my body aligned the way I need to to get a good strong push while I run. The older child can ride his bike alongside us.

I started doing this a few months ago when my husband was out of town, and it made me feel empowered. It made me feel like I was strong enough to get up and stop making excuses, that I could find a way to exert power over my own body, my own life. It made me feel free again. Now I am in the zone, trying to beat my best times on the courses I set through my neighborhood long ago, when the dogs and I used to run during my lunchtimes.

I might be tied up, but I am no longer tied down. "Yeah!" my little one says when I ask if he wants to ride in the wagon. "Whee!" he yells when I go fast. Together, we go into the suburban night. Together, we are free.

Whee!