Sunday, September 2, 2012

Short and Sweet Sunday III

Dear Elementary School Parent,

     It seems you used some less-than-stellar judgement when you sent your sick, contagious child to Kindergarten, last week. Your poor, sick, contagious child spent some quality time with my sweet, healthy boy. After spending 2, vomit-filled, days with The Littlest, most of our family members succumbed to the same sickness.

scene of the crime. Poor, sweet, innocent victim.
 
   Random parent, you made me miss my first, scheduled long(ish) run, since my stress fracture. I had everything carefully laid out. My alarm was set. My nerves were frayed but I was feeling more and more confident about it. The "motivational speech" from The Husband didn't hurt, either. "Suck it up. You're being a baby." (he chose his words more carefully, but I got the gist)

I would be with my running group, which would help immensely. There would be moral support, plenty of cold waters and sweaty friends to commiserate with.

When the barfing began, and I knew the Long Run wasn't going to happen, I began to silently curse you. The cursing became more intense, but decidedly less lucid as the night wore on. At some point, though, upon realizing I wasn't in fact going to perish in a sweaty, vomiting mess, my thoughts towards you began to change.

I will run long. Do you hear me random, poor decision-making parent?! When I can stand, and stomach a few nibbles of food and some electrolytes, I. will. run. long. It will SUCK. I will revert back to cursing you and possibly even your ancestors. All that aside, you will not ruin any more of my already mostly-broken marathon training.

This morning, I put on the same, laid-out gear and set out for my run. My goals constantly changed, based on how icky I felt. Eventually I settled on completing 9 miles or 90 minutes of running.

I took a happy picture of myself, in front of this lake. Turns out it looked way more frightening than I'd hoped...
 
Nine miles, 1.4 gallons of sweat, 2 walk breaks due to stomach cramping and 16 oz. of Gu Brewed water, later. I stopped for this runners-high-filled photo session. And I thought of you, other parent, and thanked you for giving me a renewed determination to drag myself out the door.
 
 
Sincerely,
 
The mom who ran way more than you did, this week
 
p.s. Hope you enjoyed heaving over the toilet as much as I did!!

p.p.s For running elitists : I realize 9 miles isn't "long", per se...it's all relative when recovering from injury. Says me.




6 comments:

  1. To all of the readers that thought "What a rude husband. Suck it up? You're being a baby?". I believe it was much closer to "You are a very smart person. When you are recovering from an injury you are always going to be more cautious. Especially when another injury will guarantee you'll miss your first marathon.".

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    1. at least I know how to get you to leave a comment

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  2. Ha ha - I love the defense from the hubs! And that is awful. We start school on Thursday and I'm hedging my bets on whether or not it's a stomach bug or cold that hits within the first week. I HATE back to school germs!

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    1. I hope you beat the odds and end up with 3 healthy boys. Good luck with that, btw...

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  3. 9 miles is definitely long!!! My longest run before my first half marathon was 10, and I thought it was a miracle. I can't believe you pulled yourself away from the toilet to get that run in. Dedication.

    And I just read your husband's comment. Ha! I thought that's why blogs were invented -- as an avenue to misrepresent your spouse without retribution. And how did you get your husband to comment on your blog??? I'm constantly telling my husband that I will never know if he is truly reading my blog because he NEVER comments.

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    1. dedication...stubborn stupidity...whatever. ;)

      my husband will usually make some sort of verbal comment to me, regarding a post, so I know he's read at least a sentence or two.

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