I channeled all of you

Thanks everyone so much for your lovely comments and congratulations on my pregnancy. I am thrilled to be pregnant (understatement) and I promised myself that if I got pregnant again, I would not complain about the inevitable side effects of growing a person. So, question: does it constitute complaining if one just states facts without emotion? Example, this pregnancy is causing me to be exhausted all the time. That's not a complaint right? Just a statement of fact. On the other hand: I am so exhausted that I want to sleep 18 hours a day but only have time for 7 and that leaves me too exhausted and nauseated to focus on work done which is piling up in a stomach-churning-stress-headache-inducing way, I don't have energy to play with la cocotte and am running so little that the neighbour's obese cat who is large enough to be Thanksgiving turkey is probably accumulating more mileage than me and, not coincidentally, I am looking more and more like that cat everyday. If I were to utter something that self-indulgent and whiny, THAT would be a complaint.

Long preamble just to say, despite the fact my foot is getting better, my running has been lackluster due to fatigue and compounded by hubby being out of town for 10 days. Essentially my running options were, get myself and la cocotte out the door for daycare 45 minutes early, go for a run with her in the jogger, drop her at daycare and run another 25-40 minutes to work or else run on the treadmill at night after she had gone to sleep; both seemed overwhelming. One morning I got us out the door early and just... could... not... run. So we went to the park instead and then after dropping her at daycare I stood outside for a long while wondering whether I was actually going to walk to the subway in my running clothes and pay $3 to take the subway to work when work is just 5 km from the daycare. Usually I tack on extra kms on Mount Royal, 5 km being just way too short for a run but that day even a lousy, piddling 5 km seemed overwhelming. I started walking slowly to the subway completely discouraged. I turned and started running towards work which begins as a steep uphill. Exhausted I stopped and started walking again towards the subway. I stopped. Stood for another long while telling myself it was 12.5 lousy laps of the track. I mentally screamed at myself to just MAKE A FRICKEN DECISION. Sometimes the indecisive waffling is far more exhausting than the actual run.

I decided. I channeled all of you. I thought of how Mmmonyka would just do the run period. Without thinking about whether she wanted to. Without all the mental anguish. She would just go out and execute the job because it had been assigned to her and would bring her closer to her goals. I thought about how Cherelli would do it and find a thousand subtle ways to enjoy it - the pre-autumnal cool on the mountain, the deepening of the green in the leaves before the burst of colour arrives, the gentle changes in smell of the forest's exhalations at the end of summer that foreshadow autumn. How she would find beauty on a micro and macro scale and run to partake in that. Sea Legs Girl, of course, would  get it done. But it would just be her warm-up before running another 16 km as tempo or intervals and whatever else she could fit in before and after nursing her newborn, working on her thesis, raising money for her latest humanitarian project and organizing a race. Mapp too of course would get it done. Probably more than 5 km, straight uphill, starting at 7,000 feet (or more) ending at 10,000 feet. ("Mount" Royal indeed....). Marathon Mom would get it done between baking fabulous food, grad school, working, being a mommy and coaching. Sugarbloggy would laugh at what we call "Mount Royal" and would get it done in the tough, brutally hot hills around Trieste in between her million commitments. Barefoot Angie Bee is an incredibly accomplished barefoot runner who would get the run done without batting an eye and there are many inspirational things about her. However I have to admit it was not her running I was thinking of in drawing inspiration from her. She is a mother of four... who has sex with her partner every day! To reiterate: 4 kids. Sex every day. In terms of accomplishment, that is a 2:30 marathon RIGHT THERE! If she has energy to raise 4 kids and have sex every day, surely I could eek out 5 km. BAB if you are reading this, I hope you are not offended that I re-posted that info. I was just truly, truly impressed and inspired by that post.  Xapis, soon to be mother of two, would be grateful for the chance to run injury free and wouldn't even think about fatigue, being pregnant, lack of sleep, she would just go and revel in the chance to run unfettered rather than grinding diligently away on the elliptical and bicycle... while raising her son and getting her nursing degree. Fast Bastard would do squeeze it in after his daily commute halfway across Denmark, at 3:30/km pace probably similarly to Mmmonyka without thinking about whether he wanted to. Just get it done. And SteveQ. Well SteveQ would do it on the hottest day of the year, with a broken tibia and an infected lung, on the day his car (and his stashed water) was stolen and he broke up with his girlfriend. And relish the challenge.

So I channeled all of that. It was not unlike getting an iv infusion of red bull and espresso. Pure energy and inspiration. And I got it done. 14 km including a hilly 5 km tempo in 21:00. I was very late for work. But god, it felt amazing.