Christmas in Pictures

I have been in an exceptionally good mood this Christmas despite receiving a sleeveless Blue Seventy Helix in a men's size XS. Huh? And despite the holiday being filled with the kind of drama only a nine-year-old could pull off. Sample conversation:

W: This is the best Christmas ever!

L: Yay! I'm so happy it's been a great day.

Ten minutes later... after she nearly went broke in Monopoly:

W: Oh, why does everything bad happen to ME?! [Followed by stomping out of room and slamming door.]

Sigh. Only, what, 10 more years of this?

Anyway, I have little in the way of insight to share so I thought I'd post some pictures (taken mostly by W. with her new camera) of Christmas at my parents home in NY (see my mom's famous tabletop centerpiece above).

Because my family is part Jewish, we had a little Matzo Ball soup with Christmas dinner. My dad makes the best ever!

My sister Suzy and her husband had an ultrasound earlier in the day and found out they're having a baby girl!

Willa loves matzo ball soup. She's on her second bowl.

Teddy wanted to sit at the table too! (That's really a yawn, but he looks fierce, no?)

New Way to Suffer

I'll admit to a bad habit: I ignore pain. Let me clarify. I will whine and carry on about it, but seek a professional opinion? No thanks.

Can't put weight on my right leg? Eh, it'll go away. Wait six weeks and then go to the orthopedist.

Searing pain in the upper left cheekbone? There's no way I need a root canal. Let me think about it for a year. Or two.

So if my stomach has been hurting since, oh, last January, why not wait 12 months to see if it will subside? And while I'm at it, if my daughter complains of a belly ache every single night, might as well file that away too.

Sheesh.

Took Willa to the doctor last week for a sinus infection that had been hanging around for a month or so (surprise) and thought I'd mention her stomach ache.

First question out of the doctor's mouth: "Willa, do you drink a lot of milk?"

I didn't wait for her to answer. "No, she hardly drinks milk at all."

But at the exact same moment Willa said, "Yeah, every day."

Huh?

"We have to buy milk at lunch. You need a note if you want to buy something else."

Long story short, doc writes said note, Willa stops drinking milk and, hey, no more tummy ache.

Oy. How bad of a mother am I?

(Before you think I belong to some rigid suck-it-up school of parenting, understand that plenty of kid gripes have nothing to do with actual illness. Often it's related to not wanting to clean a room, dreading the first Monday back from school vacation, or simply a cranky mood. Willa gets plenty of band-aids and kisses from me.)

As for ignoring my own aches and pains, they usually pass without drama: a tweaked muscle that heals on its own, belly trauma from pre-run Taco Bell. And honestly, I hate dealing with the doctor. I don't want hear I have to change my diet, keep a food journal, take a new medicine. I just want to be low-maintenance.

Sigh.

Well, I decided to try quitting the dairy myself. And as much as I hate to admit it, I think it might be working. I am already mourning the loss of my granola-with-yogurt breakfast, ice cream, milk and cookies. But if I can truly get rid of my gut gripes, that kind of suffering might be worth it.

Polar Express

I've been grumpy this holiday season. Is Christmas really less than two weeks away? Can I somehow wave a wand and magically make everything done? To top it off, stress has found new ways to torture me with all sorts of unpleasant digestive problems. (Why does the body do this? Oh right, it's trying to stop the insanity!)

So this morning, the thought of waking up before the sun to run five miles in 20-degree weather made multiple snooze-button hits an appealing possibility.

But somehow I dragged myself out of bed to the Christmas City Classic. This local race winds through historic Bethlehem, PA, where candles twinkle in the windows of stately houses and evergreen garlands festoon every lamp post. (I have always wanted to use the word 'festoon' in a blog post. Very satisfying.) There are the standard age group and overall awards, but runners are also awarded in costume categories.

The route travels across a bridge alongside converted factories and rail yards to Bethlehem's grittier, more industrial south side, and follows the railroad tracks for about three miles.

As the group of 350 or so runners started making its way along the route, snow started to fall. Runners were decked in assorted holiday regalia: antlers, Santa suits, one had even crafted a giant gift box around her torso.

Despite the bitter cold, it felt good to be running. My legs and lungs were happy. As we crossed the bridge, bells worn by a pair of runners literally jingled behind me, snowflakes landed on my nose, and great clouds of flakes billowed over the train tracks.

As I took it in, I felt a sense of peace. It was a cheesy Hallmark moment, the magic of Christmas and all that. But I was enjoying this run in the middle of the pack with no plans to push the pace. It was simply a blissful 44 minutes of nothing but my even breathing, the ting-ting-ting of bells, and the whispering snow.

It felt a little bit like magic.

Post-race with Erica and Jan, another EnMu athlete.

With Craig and Jan.

The Hill

Today I ran up the hill my leg snapped on last year.

Fortunately, this time it stayed in one piece.

When it happened on April Fool's Day 2007, I was visiting my parents and thought I'd do a route I used to run back when I lived at their house during the early nineties. The three-tiered hill comes about a third of the way in. I felt the snap on the second tier. I forced myself to finish the 45-minute run but had to stop multiple times to try to stretch it out, rub it out, rest it. (I had no idea it was broken even though it hurt like a mother.)

That was a miserable run.

Today it was bliss.

It's been more than a year and a half since that bad day. I've spent a good portion of this year freaking out about the possibility of another stress fracture. And today I kept waiting for the hill to beat me down. Only irrational thoughts made me imagine I'd sustain another injury on this run, but I never doubted I'd suffer on the hill. With each footfall, I wondered when the hard part would appear.

It never did.

Apparently the hill isn't that much of a hill. At least, not like I remember it.

When I think back to before the injury, to those days in the early nineties when I used to run, I have to laugh. My winter running outfit consisted of the following: random thin white "wicking" dress socks, thick wool socks, Duofold long underwear bottoms, black wind pants, a white cotton turtleneck, a dark green v-neck wool sweater, and an XL Northface purple anorak. Sartorial concerns aside, the outfit was not that uncomfortable, as bad as it sounds. But I suffered on almost every run, the drawbacks of training without a plan. That three-tiered hill was always a beast. And I wasn't even running that fast.

Cut to today. Thankfully nothing is broken right now (woot!) and I've steadily been building my running fitness.

I have a 5-mile race coming up this weekend. And now seems like a good time clarify last week's cryptic post: I signed up for the Lehigh Valley Half Marathon (my first half!) next spring and, drumroll please, have my sights set on a fall marathon.

I don't know exactly where this is coming from, but I'm going with it. Here's hoping my body holds up!

Pressure

I've been feeling a lot of it lately.

Whirlwind trip to AZ and blissfully enjoyable Thanksgiving "break" aside, these last six months have been some of the most stressful of my life. I can't really go into the reasons here since they're mostly work-related, but I can say that most nights I feel like someone has piled 50 kettlebells on my chest.

I do recognize that living a life rich with challenges isn't the easy path. And this is what I've chosen, so I need to find ways to deal. Training helps, but when I wig out over workouts not done, well, it doesn't help.

And next year I cannot imagine how I'm going to fit workouts in along with everything else. Willa will turn ten in February (it doesn't seem possible!) and suddenly has a multitude of activities pulling her in every direction. We've been judicious each year with her schedule. She takes a dance class and is on a very low-key swim team. But this year she started playing the flute and is now talking about academic extracurriculars like Reading Olympics and Odyssey of the Mind and the spring operetta. I'm thrilled to have a kid who's curious and enthusiastic, but how the hell is this all going to get done? She is a normal 10-year-old who wants to come home from school, eat a snack, and crash on the couch. Scott and I clearly will need to be more involved than ever.

Anyway, this post is veering dangerously close to not making any point at all. Um, you get that I'm stressed, right? But tonight while I was having my muscles worked over by my massage therapist extraordinaire, I had an epiphany: There might be a way to balance training and work and family next year after all.

I'm not ready to share it here, but I can tell you that it involves swimming, biking and running, but not necessarily all during the same race. And it may involve a very slight blog refocus and possible new header (because also I have to admit I'm a little bit over the current puntastic title).

I need to mull it over some more so that's all I'm going to say for right now. But stay tuned for some changes with the new year...