On the day of the race, I woke up from my nightmare, grateful that I didn’t have to run my 5K twice. I verified with Mike that he didn’t invite a family with too many children and dogs. I was assured by him that if 7:15 am came around and my family hadn’t arrived that he would leave without them. He pointed at his shoes the minute he put them on.
I’ve been sick the last few days, so it took me a little longer to get back to you than I thought it would. I’m sorry for the delay.
The morning of the race I woke up with a nightmare. In my dream, I was waiting for my family to arrive so we could all go to the race. I knew that Stacey, Dan, my mom and her husband, Reed, were coming, but I had told them that if they didn’t get here by 7:15 am, I was going to leave without them. Even though it was after 7:15 am, Mike wouldn’t let me leave. He purposely wouldn’t put on his shoes. He wanted to wait for them to come, even if it meant that I was late for the start of the race.
Today is my race. I’m writing this ahead of time, of course, so I have no idea how it’s going to turn out. And, as is the case most of the time, you probably won’t even get an update after the whole thing is over until you have forgotten about it.
It’s my first 5K race in two years. I weigh less than I did at the last race and I’ve been training harder than I did for the last race. Neither one of those facts are helping my confidence right now. My goal is to beat my last time. Last time I did the 5K in forty minutes, so I want to do this race in less than forty minutes. Sounds easy enough, right?
Buddha and St. Jude agree. I need to go back to the gym. I need to take the Bosu Synergy class again and again until I master it. I need to take all the classes until I have mastered them all. I can’t let this minor thing get in my way, but I argue with them.
“It’s not a minor thing. She really hurt my feelings.”
Buddha: “So you’re feelings are hurt. Pain is as much of living as pleasure is.”
St. Jude: “I’ve noticed that you aren’t directing your questions, pleading or replies to me. Even you know that it’s not a lost cause.”
“It doesn’t feel safe there anymore.”
Buddha: “Safety is an illusion. There are those who feel safe on the streets of New York and there are others that tremble in a meadow. Safety is what you believe it to be.”
St. Jude: “You’re supposed to find what you fear and conquer it. You’ve been given a great opportunity. Conquer it.”
“I want to punch that girl. I wish I remembered what she looked like.”
Buddha: “Yes, remember her. Remember how hard it was for her to get up on the Bosu. She had to hold on to her step. The teacher helped you, but she didn’t help that girl. Maybe she was jealous of you. All of us are struggling. Her struggle is just different than yours.”
St. Jude: “Go ahead and punch the bitch. I don’t care. When you’re doing time for assault, then you can talk to me.”
“What if someone makes fun of me again?”
Buddha: “Then laugh with them. You have to admit. You did look pretty funny on that Bosu. Your little butt was jiggling a bit, you know. You’re just mad at her because she voiced your own fears. If you hadn’t been ashamed of yourself, her pointing would have gone unnoticed by you. You would have assumed that she was pointing at someone else.”
St. Jude just stands quietly and looks straight ahead. He knows that I’m not even listening to him now.
Akenaten chimes in, “In case anyone is listening, I thoroughly approve of the color in her skin. It looks like she got some sun.”
As you may or may not know, I have a 5K race coming up this Saturday. I signed up for it so long ago that most of the people I’ve told have forgotten about it. Maybe they are scared to mention it to me, fearing that I’ve flaked out on it. It doesn’t matter. The important people in my life know about it and are planning to be there.
I’ve trained for this race on the treadmill almost exclusively. Now, I am here, four days before the race with little or no training outside. That’s my excuse. I can’t go to the gym. I have to do some outside runs to get myself ready for Saturday’s race. And, I need to taper a couple of days before the race, so I won’t be going to the gym at all this week.
Sure, it’s a great excuse, but it isn’t the only reason.
Friday, Mike took me to every store in the Salt Lake Valley looking for one of those Bosu Balance Trainers, but to no avail. I just resigned myself to learning how to balance on them at the gym, in front of all the people. All the people just watching me learn how to balance.
If that sounds scary to you, then you’ll understand how I felt.
I tried a new class yesterday called Bosu Synergy. It was really hard and reminded me why I usually don’t like aerobic classes. The teacher has taught the class so many times that she just assumes that her students know what she wants. With little or no instruction, she will just change moves. That’s great if you are watching a video over and over, but this is a live thing. I can’t rewind her to get it right. Fortunately, it didn’t concentrate on dance moves. We were using a step and a half ball thing that’s so popular right now. The half ball thing is the Bosu half of the class, but the Synergy is a little more elusive. I guess they were trying to evoke an image of high energy, but that’s not what synergy means. I guess in gym speak, synergy means we’re going to use the Step too.
Sweat and tears taste the same to me, but if sweat gets in my eyes, it hurts like a muthafucka. There has to be something profound that can come of this fact, but every thing that I think of sounds corny. It’s painful just to go through the thought process.
Work and grief are not the same. Just as you cannot replace tears with sweat, you cannot replace sorrow with labor.
– Laura Moncur, Pick Me weblog, 04-10-04
Nope, that just sounds like it was quoted out of a 1950’s Christian Stories To Live By book. There has to be something here that is profound and touching and so incredibly quotable that I’ll end up in Bartlett’s.
Sweat and tears both taste salty, but they are not interchangeable. Tears rarely cool you off on a hot day and sweat stings when it gets in your eyes. Each is unique to itself and each must be used appropriately. It is the same with work and grief. They are not interchangeable. Do not work harder when you need to grieve. Do not grieve when you need to work harder. Each activity is unique to itself and each must be used appropriately.
– Laura Moncur, Pick Me weblog, 04-10-04
Nope, that one is way too long. It’s hard to get in the annuls of history with more than one or two sentences. One perfect sentence is what the quotable masters were known for. They could state everything in one, simple and beautiful sentence.
If the sweat is stinging your eyes, wipe off your face, stupid.
– Laura Moncur, Pick Me weblog, 04-10-04
Yeah, that’s one sentence, but it’s a little too irreverent. Sure, it says that working hard is important, but not so important as to ignore the sweat in your eyes. It’s essential to take a moment to take care of yourself, even during hard labor. Sure, it says all those things, but it’s not quite on the quotable level. It sounds like a joke quote. Plus, it doesn’t say what I really want to say.
I was on the treadmill yesterday morning. I was working really hard and the sweat started stinging my eyes. I realized that I had been using exercise to exorcise my grief for so long and didn’t even notice that it wasn’t working. My exercise is really helping me be healthy. It elevates my mood for the day, but it doesn’t solve the problem. It doesn’t help me grieve for the life that I thought that I was going to lead.
Only truly letting myself grieve those regrets will get this out of my system. Sweat can’t take the place of the tears that I need to shed. The opposite is true also. There have been times when I’ve just wallowed in self-pity when I needed to get my ass out of bed. Tears can’t take the place of sweat either.
Work can’t replace grief. Sometimes you need to cry and if you try to replace tears with sweat you’ll just end up stinging your eyes.
– Laura Moncur, Pick Me weblog, 04-10-04
Maybe that’s it. It’s not one sentence, but it’s exactly what I wanted to say. I guess I’ll leave the quotablity to Winston Churchill.
Almost NINE years later, I found the perfect quote on I CAN DO IT.
It reads:
Tears will get you sympathy.
Sweat will get you results.
YES! That’s the perfect quote!
I saw the advertisements for the new class on the gym doors, but it took me a month to try them. It was the kind of class that’s right up my alley. There is one treadmill that faces all the others where the instructor is. I’ve walked past that treadmill many times at the gym and it sat there as a reminder, “You should try that Trekking class.”
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