Reconfiguring

Saturday Oct 19th was our first weekend in six weeks with zero cross country meet. It felt so rare and luxurious that I totally relaxed and went with the flow. Normally I create and follow a detailed to do list every day, but on Saturday I laid in bed until nearly 8am and did what I felt like doing all day long. It was a very soothing mental break. When every weekday ticks down to leaving for cross country practice at 2:45pm and every week ticks down to a long Saturday at a far-away cross country meet, my to do list creates structure for me to finish necessary tasks within the very limited time I have. It manages a lot of stress and anxiety by removing unknowns and giving me a specific direction each day. I survive by constantly looking ahead at what's next on the list, and trying to get as much done as possible as efficiently as possible so I can have time to rest before the next cross country activity. That's why Saturday felt so freeing: I was completely free and had no mental clock ticking down, no body battery draining before the day's work was done, no skeletally destructive school bus ride at the end of it. 

This week I hit a wall made up of several different types of bricks: exercise, sleep, and food. It all circled back to one issue: my motivation was low. Exercise requires a lot of quality food to fuel my body, which requires planning, shopping, and cooking. Exercise also makes me sore, and the sore achy post-workout muscles make it hard to sleep well. When I'm tired, it's hard to plan and cook and exercise again and again. As the week progressed, I felt more and more tired and uncertain and unmotivated. A hefty amount of my unmotivated-ness this week centered on a personal exercise crisis. 

For the past three years I have been in a fitness mindset of train-and-improve. In the fall of 2021 and 2022, I trained for and ran my fastest 5k times of my life. Then I got injured which led me to 6 months of physical therapy and a year of PT strength workouts. All of that pushing, pushing, pushing my body far outside its comfort zone kind of got in my head and now that I'm on the other side of alllll of that work, I feel at a loss. It has been a "what now?" kind of a week. What do I do for exercise? All I really want to do is run, but 18 months of intensive time spent with a physical therapist has taught me that just running will not be sustainable as I approach age 40 and beyond; it needs to be supported with targeted strength and core work so I can stay injury free enough to even run at all! 

But my brain is still stuck in train-and-improve mode, so I'm struggling to figure out what sustainable everyday exercise looks like for me. I don't have a specific running goal that I want to work towards (achieved that in 2022 with my 19:53 5k). I don't have a specific weight room goal to work for either (in August I reached my longtime goal and finally did a full push-up pain free). I have been slowly remembering/re-learning more and more that I don't always have to be actively working toward a fitness goal of measurable improvement; I just need to figure out what I want to do and how much time I spend doing it. I need to figure out how to exercise in a way that is sustainable long term. I used to have it all figured out, but the past 3 years were a rather significant interruption in that old norm, and now I am starting over at this real-life-exercise thing again. 

I could just run at cross country practice and call it good. But I don't feel fully satisfied when that's the only exercise I get, because that exercise is not done on my own terms. I am realizing that I get rather territorial about my exercise time! The handful of times that I have been able to go on a run by myself at my own pace over the past two months have been soul filling. So I know that I need something more than just coaching as a form of exercise, but coaching also takes a vast amount of energy! I also can't just do a hard workout before practice and then coach a 2 hour practice--I tried that this week and nearly perished with hunger and fatigue! I don't even want to do super hard workouts, but I do want the satisfaction of to leaning in and pushing myself sometimes, but I don't want to spend my life with sore muscles every day... 

Do you see my circular dilemma? I usually wait to write a blog post about an issue until I have it figured out, but this one is not something I'm going to figure out once and then be done with it; the exercise that works for me this week or this month will probably change over and over with seasons and schedules and years. Ugh.

A brief pause to totally psychoanalyze myself: maybe this is really all about my deep-seated craving for a stable careful Plan To Follow. Plans are soothing. Plans are reliable. I am good a following plans. Plans help me know what's coming and what to expect. I don't currently have an exercise plan because I don't want to be pushing myself to the limit anymore, but I also feel lost without a plan! This is a chicken and egg situation here, people, and it is driving me crazy! I have some ideas to try and I'm sure I will eventually figure it out, settle in, and be fine, but this week has been a rocky road of re-realization that I don't have to keep training to my maximum outer limit to stay fit and enjoy being active. It is a humbling thought. 

I am turning 38 in a few weeks, so I definitely feel that clock ticking--if I do want to get a PR in any distance from 10k on down, I have the best chance of achieving that before I turn 40. That's just how aging bodies work. Will I have regrets later if I decide not to use the last two years of my 30s to their fullest physical capacity? Do I even have any old physical goals/hopes/dreams to reawaken? Right now as I type this, I can't think of anything.

Good grief, is this my version of a midlife crisis? Bahahaha! 

Alright, that's enough of that. I did some running on my own this week, actively working on letting go of expectations and goals. On Saturday I enjoyed a low impact workout in our barn with zero running. It was a good start to reconfiguring my personal exercise regime. Another reconfiguration happened in our barn this week: a truckload of fitness equipment was delivered and installed! In addition to all of the other equipment and flooring, etc. that my parents have already donated to our barn, they recently generously donated four treadmills, two rowing machines, an elliptical machine, a stationary bike, two squat racks, two sets of medicine balls, and a functional trainer. It was a huge load of boxes, and I was incredibly grateful for the two installation guys who worked for close to 12 hours to get it all assembled and working properly. The barn looks like a full-on gym now, with rows of sleek equipment. I had to make an appointment for an electrician to add two circuits to support the four treadmills, so the treadmills are not fully up and running yet, but we have tested everything else!

On Saturday morning, Jeff and I worked out in the barn together. He did 10 minutes on each cardio machine, and I did a 20 minute test run on the elliptical. Then we did some weight lifting. The equipment in the barn is in three separate rooms, so we weren't exactly working out side by side for much of the time, but it was still pretty fun, and I was proud of myself for getting a good workout in that did not involve running. (but my arms and glutes got sore, arg! haha)

Other tidbits from the week:

Rose stayed home from school sick on Monday, and managed to go back on Tuesday but felt pretty drained and exhausted at her last middle school cross country meet of the season on Wednesday. I'm so excited that next year Rose will officially be on the high school cross country team! Rose had two orchestra mini-performances this week as prelude to awards ceremonies at her middle school. The minute she had caught her breath after her cross country race on Wednesday, I drove her 45 minutes back to Sunnyside, grabbing Panda Express dinner en route, so she could play at the first award ceremony. She peeled off her team uniform top in the back seat and pulled on her black concert dress quickly before heading in to perform. Rose received an award Thursday night for achieving a 4.0 GPA during her entire 7th grade career last year. I also stopped in for a quick parent teacher conference with Rose that night, and her teachers just love her so much. Rose loves school and is so interested in her classes and music, even though she can think circles around pretty much everyone in the room. Rose was also a student of the month at her middle school.

Amber was student of the month at her elementary school. After her piano lesson on Monday night, I took her to Burger Ranch to cash in her award coupon for a free hamburger. I ordered it for her in the drive thru, but when we pulled around to the window, I pulled forward so Amber could hand her coupon to the cashier and accept her burger. Amber said "wow, this makes me feel special!" 

Jay has been getting better and better at driving, and now I don't feel quite as terrified when I ride with him in the car. Driving to seminary every morning and home from cross country practice every afternoon has improved his in-town driving skills drastically. That being said...today after church when Jay was backing the van into the garage, he clipped the side mirror on the wall so it bent and twisted downwards! He was so horrified! It was cute. Somehow I was completely calm and unfazed by the situation. All of my new-driver fears center on crashing into other people, apparently. Thankfully the van's side mirror was super flexible and Amber twisted it back into place in the blink of an eye. Jay also had two insanely good workouts at cross country practice this week. He has recovered from his sickness and his knee injury and he is ready to run a PR!

Jeff's health has been up and down all week. I am doing ok at handling the on-again-off-again responsibilities that creates for me. He had a good day on Tuesday, and at the end of cross country practice after announcements, Jeff asked "are there any questions?" I called out sotto voce, "why are you so amazing?" A handful of the kids near me heard my question, and Jeff answered me at full coach volume: "Why am I so amazing? Because I found someone to marry who's too good for me, and I try to live up to that and be good enough for her every day!" Some of the kids on the team said "awww!" And I saw several slightly stunned faces. Our whole team knows we're married, but we rarely have time to display much affection at practice. There are lots of different ways to act married, and our way often surprises the teenagers on our team.

On Saturday night, I took the kids to our ward Halloween Harvest activity at the church. Jeff stayed home dealing with his latest bout of symptoms (digestive and heart rate this time). The Relief Society was in charge of the activity, so I brought all three kids an hour early at 5:30pm to help set up. We had a dinner of soups (I brought soup too and it spilled all over the place in the van on the way to the church-- no matter how carefully Jay drove, the soup sloshed). After dinner, there was a kids' costume parade across the stage and then the youth ran carnival games for the kids in a row of classrooms. Rose was in charge of pin the nose on the pumpkin, and Jay was in charge of water pong (bounce the ping pong ball into the cups of water). The activity was very well attended, and it felt like a very good balance of engagement for youth and kids, and talk-time for parents. Bonus: lots of people helped clean up at the end so we were home before 9pm. Amber dressed up as Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter, and Rose wore a pirate hat. Jay wore an FSY t-shirt and said he was a typical church-member youth. 

When we got home from the ward activity at 8:45pm on Saturday night, Rose and Amber were on a major sugar rush, so I suggested that they go ride some of the exercise equipment in the barn. Rose came back in 10 minutes later saying she was bored out there, so I told her to turn on the TV and watch an episode while she biked. Rose biked and Amber did the elliptical machine for an entire episode before they came in all tired out. This barn gym is a gift that keeps on giving.

PICTURES:

Amber is learning cursive in her 4th grade class, and I LOVE it. She's my first child who has had consistent cursive instruction in school. 

Jeff, testing out the new squat rack after day one of the installation process.

Rose on the starting line of her last middle school cross country meet. She ran the 8th grade girls race at the Mid Valley League cross country championship meet and finished the 1.5 mile race in 12:02. She was bummed with her time, but knew she had nothing in the tank after being sick for the few days leading up to the meet. I told her to take the rest of the week off from running to fully recover, and on Saturday, she slept in till noon. It was much-needed.

West Valley Middle School has a sizeable hill on their campus, which made this a good cross country course.

Rose, feeling all the discomfort of racing in an empty recently sick/not fully recovered body.

Walking back to the parking lot with my Rose girl after her race.

The weight room!

The cardio room!

It looks so official in there, minus the orange plywood walls. But I think they add to the charm of The Barn.

One morning Amber had a piano practice session where she asked for my help and got mad at me.  Classic and tiresome and please let all of these hours of anguish matter at some point in her life! I have so many white hairs from just Amber's piano journey alone, in addition to the ordeal of gestating and birthing her and surviving the first zesty energetic five years of her life. Possibly the number one thing my kids dislike hearing me say is "practicing is more than just playing a song through once a day!" It drives me crazy when Amber sits down and stutters her way through a song once and then closes the book. No wonder her piano progress has been glacial! 

Rose, receiving her 4.0 award plaque. Each kid got to choose a teacher to speak about them during the ceremony. Rose chose her ELA teacher, Ms. Spinney.

Amber left me this note in my bag during cross country practice on Friday. It was chilly outside, so she took the van keys from my bag and went to sit in the van. I was so surprised to find this helpful note!

Evidence of my first elliptical workout. It was only 20 minutes and it took me the first 10 minutes to figure out just how high of a resistance level and how fast to move my feet to get my heart rate up, but I got there eventually and worked up a sweat.

The chicken soup flood of 2024. It saturated an entire dish towel. Thank goodness for my rubber floor mats. Next time I will put the soup in the instant pot, which has a lid that seals on instead of this secondhand crock pot with an ill-fitting replacement lid.

Rose hosting Amber in her pin the nose on the pumpkin game room.

Jay got a kick out of spinning kids around to get them dizzy before having them try to bounce a ping pong ball into cups of water. I love his genuine smile--it's rare that I capture it in a picture!

Amber dressed as Luna Lovegood: Amber wore my college graduation gown and used a chopstick as her wand. We printed out a Ravenclaw logo and pinned the paper logo to the robe. I forgot to take a picture of Amber on Saturday night, so I had her put her costume on really quick on Sunday morning so I could get a picture.

It was nice to get Halloween-y-ness out of the way early this year.