A week or so ago, he landed an interview at PetSmart. The job would require that he come in at 6 AM to clean the animal cages. To say Paul is not a morning person is a vast understatement. He has significant sleep issues so it’s not that unusual for him to go to bed when I’m getting up for the day. Also, he said he wasn’t keen on cleaning tarantula cages. But he needs a job and it certainly would be a place where he would enjoy working so he’d likely stay which means he wouldn’t have to go through the job hunt again any time soon.

But he didn’t get that job.

Then he scored an interview at Wal-Mart, where he wasn’t super-keen on working, so he asked his job coach to go with him so she could see how his interviewing skills were and give him feedback. She was pleased and said that if he keeps interviewing like that, he’d have a job sooner or later. That really boosted his confidence.

Pets Supplies Plus, or as we call it, the dog store, called him for an interview on Friday. This would be a dream job for him. It’s a smaller store, he’s familiar with it and comfortable there, and they are very focused on customer service which Paul, despite his struggles with reading people, he excels at. He speaks fluent dog. I printed out a copy of his resume and a pet resume I had made for him which detailed all the pets he’s had and his responsibilities in taking care of them. His job coach provided a couple of documents about the job program he’s in, so I printed those out too and put it all in a folder for Paul to take to the manager. He dressed in his good pants and white button-down shirt and tie, and looked sharp. I had high hopes for him.

He said the interview went well, and that was good. He handed over the info about the job program, and briefly explained that it would pick up his wages for the first month, plus provide an aid for on-the-job training. On Monday his job coach called the store to explain more about the program. We had the deck stacked so far in his favor: who could turn down someone who is a loyal customer, a fan even, who has experience with different types of pets, who comes with his own trainer, and they don’t even have to pay for the entire first month.

He didn’t get it.

The manager hired someone with pet shop experience, which is understandable. They are opening a new store in the next town over and the manager said that Paul interviewed so well that he will recommend him for an interview there in June. Paul felt good about how well he had done, and somewhat hopeful about the new store.

But I didn’t take it so well. It’s hard for me to watch him be turned down for something I know he’d be good at. I want to fault the manager for not being willing to take on an employee who might be a bit more work initially yet would be a stellar performer in the long run, but I understand that business is about making money and that he needs the store run smoothly, even effortlessly, so much is going on with the new store. Really, there is no one to blame, it just wasn’t the right time and place, and that’s all there is to it. But all I could see was that he needs some place to go and something to do and, frankly, I need some financial relief, and June feels like an eternity away.

“Mom, I’m always going to get beat out by someone with experience,” he said. “Always.”

I nodded. It’s the first time he’s ever come in second for a job, and I could see that it got him thinking about why he wasn’t first. The only difference was that the person who got it had experience. I know his revelation might not seem like much, but it was a big step for him. It actually opens the door for him to try new things strictly because he needs the experience. It’s so difficult for him to do that, and as much as I’ve tried to convince him of its worthiness, it seemed like all pain, no gain to him.

I suggested volunteering at the Verona Street animal services in the city, and he said OK, that he’d do it if I did it too. Frankly, I’m not thrilled about kennel work, but I said OK, because how can I expect him to gain through his discomfort if I’m not willing to do the same? So I’m working on the volunteer application and looking for other possibilities for him to gain the experience he needs. We’ll just stack the deck a little bit more so when June comes, the cards will turn up aces in his favor.

I have watched my friends using the traditional plan go out for long runs of 8, 10, 12 miles while my long run consisted of four miles, then five, then finally six miles. I miss the long runs, and the feeling of accomplishment that it brought. The slow plodding of long miles suited me, made me feel that I could get through anything. They took my best traits – perseverance and endurance – and translated them into miles. With that missing from my current plan, at times I wonder whether or not I have made the right choice.

—————-

Paul got a new job coach this week. He started working with the old one about a month ago, after six months of paperwork and hoops to wiggle through. Finally he is at the point where they can start applying for jobs for him. I thought this would be a positive step forward but instead he felt discouraged.

“She googled for jobs, then we filled out online applications,” he reported.

“What about that job she mentioned across town?”

“She didn’t have a contact there. She just saw it on the Internet.”

“Oh. Did you tell her you’ve tried applying online before?”

“Yes. She said this is how it’s done. That she doesn’t really go out and try to get me a job. That that’s what a job agency does, and that they get paid to find a person a job. She doesn’t get paid to do that. Just to help me apply. And to teach me how to interview. That’s it.”

We have tried all this before on our own and have gotten nowhere. What Paul needs is a way in where they understand he has some differences but can do the job so they hire him anyway. I don’t blame him for being discouraged.

“This is a really traditional way to get a job,” I told Paul. “Maybe it does work for some people but it’s never worked for me, and so far hasn’t worked for you. But we’re just going to have to let her discover that on her own. And who knows, maybe she knows something we don’t, so it might work this time. So let’s let her work her plan for now. I have a lot of ideas of other ways she can help you when she exhausts this, so let her learn first, then I’ll push her to do something different. OK?”

Paul agreed, although it’s frustrating because he’s ready to work NOW and it will take several weeks, maybe months, for this to play out.

——————-

At times I miss my old training plan. Most of my runs are now alone, either on the roads or on the treadmill so I miss the camaraderie of slogging through miles with friends. But the new plan is bringing new insights. I find that running six days a week suits me. It’s actually easier than running just three or four days a week. I’m running more miles than ever, and I’m less sore because there is no day-off for DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) to set in. I’ve had to make some changes in my sleep and nutrition to accommodate the increase in training. My body has changed in unexpected ways, and it feels both revelatory and gratifying.  I love that the traditional way served me so well, there was a time and place for that, and I love that I’m trying something new.  And that’s all we really can do, isn’t it — just keep trying, keep plugging along, mile after mile, day after day.

The speed work is going well. I have done speed work from time to time, but now like I’m doing it now. Instead of running a pace 90 seconds faster than my goal marathon pace, I would run “as fast as I can” which left me feeling so exhausted that it erased any gains I might have made. So I abandoned it. But this time, it’s a reasonable pace run in increasingly longer intervals. “Toughing it out for a little bit longer” is what I do best.

The tempo run is a different beast. You have to run a sustained pace that is midway between the marathon goal pace and the speed work pace. Currently my plan calls for a five mile tempo run. At my pace, that’s nearly an hour. That’s a long time to be running at a slightly harder pace. It’s a lot easier to strain through an interval that lasts a minute or two, than to be uncomfortable for an hour.

I failed at my first attempt at the tempo run. It was hot in the gym, stuffy even, and while I like the treadmill because it keeps the pace for me, it’s also monotonous. I don’t dread the treadmill like a lot of other runners do. I actually like it, because I can dial in the pace and forget it. I don’t have to be watching my Garmin Forerunner to constantly make sure I’m running at the right speed. It takes the guess work out of the run. But there’s no air movement and no change in scenery and no hills to liven up the run. It takes a different kind of mental endurance.

On the week of my second attempt at the tempo run, I was working in Daytona. The hotel has a treadmill so that part would be the same, which is good. But the treadmill faces a mirror, whereas the one at my gym looks out a wall-size window. Also, I can choose at the gym whether or not to run on a treadmill with a TV. I usually choose not to, but it can come in handy as a distraction for a tempo run. The one at the hotel has a TV too, but no sound, and no outlet for headphones. Yeah, I don’t understand it either, but I even researched it on the Internet and can’t figure out how to get sound, or even closed-captioning, on the TV. So usually I turn it on anyway, then make up dialog for whatever show I choose.

I opened the door to the hotel gym and hot air met me. Ugh. There was an old guy in there lifting weights. Normally I’d find a 70-something old guy lifting weights to be very inspiring but old people like it warm in the room, really warm. All I could think was that this was exactly like last week, but with an uglier view.

Mind over environment, I told myself. My plan to outsmart that mute TV was to watch a movie on my iPad. I’ve only done that once or twice before so I figured out how to set it up to watch Brokeback Mountain (that oughta distract me, eh?). I set the iPad up on the rack on the treadmill and started to run. While I warmed up, the movie started, then stopped while it downloaded some more. Then a minute more, then more downloading. And then, the downloading icon just spun and spun and spun.

I finished my warmup, revved up the treadmill to the tempo pace, and gritted my teeth. I batted away a feeling of doom as I sweated in the heat with nothing to watch, no distractions. I sent telepathic messages to the old guy to stop lifting weights, to go back to his room where he could set it at whatever temperature he wanted. Eventually that worked because he left. I paused the treadmill and lower the thermostat from 74 to 64, then hopped back on as a glory of cool air blasted from the vents.

It got better from there. I turned on the silent TV. I plugged in my quirky playlist, and tried to remember the dialog from the Law & Order episode that pantomimed on the TV. The first mile drifted by, and so did the second. At two and a half miles, I slowed to a walk to take a drink, just a tenth of a mile that I would make up at the end of the run. I cranked the treadmill up again and plugged away at it. A lot of running is like this — just plodding along, letting the legs do their work, releasing the mind to venture elsewhere, reminding it occasionally to keep out of the business of the legs.

Mile four came, and I slowed for another drink. I now had two tenths of a mile to add to the end, but this seemed a reasonable trade-off for hydration. It’s funny, but no matter what distance I run, the last ten percent is always the hardest to push through. Those last yards seem to move by more slowly than any of the previous ones, and the urge to stop is strongest then, just when the finish line is in full view. Kelly Clarkson came on my playlist to remind me that what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger, and I have to admit that in that last tenth of a mile, I did a little fist-pumping right there alone on the treadmill.

So, this week, I redeemed myself. By the time I stumbled back to my room, sweaty and triumphant, it was 8:30, a time at which I’m normally getting ready for bed. I showered and changed into my jammies, and settled in front of the TV with the salmon salad I had picked up from Panera. It felt a little decadent to be lounging in my jammies eating so late, but mostly it felt well-earned. I surfed the channels until I found something to watch.

Law & Order was on, this time with sound.

The definition of insanity, according to Albert Einstein, is doing the same thing and expecting different results.

I’ve had great success with my old training plan. There’s no denying that. Where I once thought the marathon was way beyond what I could ever do, I have now completed four of them. The old plan works: it made sure I could finish the 26.2 mile distance. In fact, I’m so certain I can finish a marathon that I’ve signed up to run two in 2013.

I decided to change plans not because of what I can do, but because of what I couldn’t do in Chicago. Without training for speed, I was on a PR pace for 18 miles out of the 26 miles. If I can do that without trying, what might happen if I actually trained for it? Just as I once wondered whether the marathon was possible at all, now I wonder if running the marathon a little faster is within the realm of possibility.

The old plan gave me the same result for every marathon I’ve run. Einstein would suggest that, if I want different results, I need to use a different plan.

I searched around and found one that has worked for a lot of other people, although I don’t know how many are 53-year-old women who took up running distance at age 47. I bought the book, read it cover to cover, and grasped the science behind it. It was different enough from what I had been doing that I decided to give it a try.

The old plan emphasized the weekend long run with two or three long runs during the week. The new plan has me running six days a week.

Which brings me back to when I first started running distance. I knew nothing about running other than left-right-left-right. I worked myself up from running three miles every other day to running six miles five days a week. I wanted to be sure I could complete the 10K (6.2 miles) I was training for. When I discovered that marathoners ran the same number or fewer miles per week, I looked at training plans developed by experts to figure out how to reconfigure my miles to take me further by running fewer days but longer distances.

Now I’m back to running nearly every day, and as it turns out, I like it. The first six weeks were base-building: five days a week running slower than I normally do. A lot slower. More like trotting than running. In fact, I felt like I was losing, not gaining fitness.

Then I noticed that as I ran my short, slow distances again and again and again, my fitness had definitely improved. I had no trouble maintaining five runs per week — the short runs were not taxing and, here’s a bonus, easy to fit into my schedule. And here was an unexpected bonus: the near-daily runs created less of an endorphin roller coaster, more of a steady, even road.

Due to the cold, ice, and dark, I did a lot of my runs on the treadmill. When I ran outside, I discovered I had trouble keeping my pace down. I felt strong and ready to be unleashed, like the cap ready to burst off a shaken bottle.

In the second phase, my runs have turned into six days a week, including two runs each week called “something of substance.” I like that phrase. Not “everything must be extraordinary” or my opposite go-to: “nothing you do is worthwhile,” but just simply “something of substance.” This little particular part needs to be a little more, not every day everything to the extreme, just two days need to be a smidgen more.

I made it through the speed work on Tuesday, a major accomplishment, then had a day of rest on Wednesday (now my favorite day of the week). Thursday brought my first tempo run. I had to keep a steady pace that is faster than my natural pace, and do it for five miles. At the pace I run, that’s almost an hour. Or as I like to call it, an eternity.

On Thursday, I admit I was a bit sore from Tuesday’s speed work followed by a day off. You’d think a day off would be good but it actually allows more time for DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) to set in. I mounted the treadmill tired and sore. The speed work had required a lot of mental toughness and the tempo run seemed easy in comparison, so I had not mentally prepared for it. It was hot in the gym with all 20 treadmills in use. This night it felt stifling.

I forced myself through two miles on pace, then walked a bit to drink some water. I eked out one more mile on pace, but then I couldn’t do it any more. I felt miserable. I didn’t want to run any more, maybe ever. Somehow I convinced myself to walk the remaining two miles, then took my sorry self home, dumped me in the shower, and followed it up with a glass of wine.

I had felt good, even triumphant on Tuesday, not just that I did something of substance, but that I was something of substance. That’s really all I want for myself, to be something of substance. But I couldn’t pull it off, not that night.

A new day came, and I slogged through my slow recovery run. The weekend brought longer distances outside, and that raised my spirits and my confidence too. I ran according to the new plan, ticking off one day after another, logging more miles than I ever had, letting the slow runs make me stronger. I’d get another shot at the tempo run in the new week. This time I’d be ready.

To be continued . . .

To warm up, I walked half a mile, then ran a slow half mile. I had 12 intervals to run, a quarter-mile at a time, and that seemed like a lot, especially since I was counting them on my fingers. I would need to work through all the fingers on my right hand, then all on the left, then back for two more on the right.

I cranked up the treadmill for the prescribed pace for the first quarter and it wasn’t so bad, not nearly as fast as I would have forced myself to run if I had been doing a track workout. Also, a quarter mile passes a lot more quickly when you’re running faster. I got through the first one, then very-slow jogged the next quarter mile. One down, many to go, but it wasn’t that bad. Then it was time to run fast again, so I did, counting off another set on my right hand. Then recover with a slow run, again and again, I really had no trouble at all with the right hand intervals.

When I reached the left hand, it started to get a little more difficult. I knew I would finish the intervals, if for no other reason than to prove my tenacity could work in my favor. Paul and I had a tough session with his therapist on Monday and the impact of my choices on his life left me feeling inadequate. Dismal, really. The most important work of my life and I fell short, all while feeling that I was doing what was best every step of the way. Living with my own failures is a struggle for me, hurting someone with my decisions even more so, nearly impossible to accept that my decisions, the ones I thought so right at the time, could hurt the one person I am responsible for in this world, the one who depended so much on me and my judgment.

By the ninth interval, I was getting tired. I should have fueled more before the run, and I was feeling the fatigue. Frankly, during the slow parts, I walked a bit, just a tenth of a mile, quiet and patient, then got back to the slow-run pace. When the next fast quarter came up, I cranked up the treadmill and pushed through it, keeping at it as the numbers ticked by. I didn’t do the intervals perfectly – I walked a bit during the all the remaining slow quarters  – but I ran all the fast parts. The hard parts. My tenacity held true and saw me through, on the treadmill, and maybe beyond. I might not have always made the right choices, those ones that can only be seen in hindsight, but I never quit, even when I wanted to.

I have doubts now where I had none before, and it pains me to know Paul may be paying the price. The only thing I’m sure of is that I’m still here, still trying to help my son have his best life, still pushing as needed, still being quiet and patient as he learns and grows and heals, both of us keeping at it again and again and again.

The off-season is a love/hate affair for me. I love not being held to a training program. I love being able to pollute my body with wine and chocolate and chips, all the things I hold in moderation when I’m training. I love remaining fit even though I’m doing hardly anything to maintain it. And I love being lazy.

But those things only last for a while until I start paying the price for them. When I do go for a run, I feel every ounce of wine, chocolate, and chips that I ate, and it feels awful. I start to gain weight because I’m burning so few calories in comparison to how much I’m taking in. Eventually I get tired of resting and want to do something, anything really.

The off-season is necessary for the brain as much as the body. My mind needed to recover from being so focused for so long, and for trying to hold everything together and keep all the plates spinning on sticks. Keeping everything going, all the time, for everyone, is exhausting. By late fall, I was spent with nothing left to give to anyone, including myself.

So I stopped running and loved me some chocolate. And drank some wine. And you know what? It was really good. That’s the scary part for me: I really like living a hedonist lifestyle. I love it a little too much.

When I say I ate chocolate and drank wine and ate chips, I don’t mean a little bit here and there. We have a new Trader Joe’s nearby and I sampled as many chocolate-covered everythings as I could. Chocolate-covered cherries and mints and edamame. Dark chocolate-covered raisins. And my favorite, dark-chocolate covered caramels. I ate two boxes of those. By myself. No sharing. I drank wine every night, one or two glasses, a bottle a week, and it was so nice to feel so relaxed with no thought of having to get up in the morning to run. Of course I needed a snack to go with that wine — cheese or pickles or, you guessed it, chips. It really was quite a wonderful way to end the day.

But all that caught up with me. You can’t possibly load up your body with that much sugar, salt, fat, and alcohol and not feel the effects. I gained ten pounds in two months. I couldn’t sleep through the night. My energy level, and thus my moods, swung uncomfortably. I went to yoga once and felt miserable, not just the tightness in my body, but as if I had the Lake Erie of my childhood coursing through my veins. I knew I should stop, I wanted to stop, I hated the way I felt, but I let myself go on right up until the end of December. I didn’t stop until I was sick of it all, so sick I no longer wanted any of that stuff any more.

We’re now at the end of January, I’m back to training, and I still have no desire for chocolate, wine, and chips. Oh, I’ve had little bits – a cookie a couple of weeks ago, a gluten-free cupcake last weekend, wine at dinner with a friend, and a few chips that can with a meal (but not the whole bag). Each time I’ve indulged, I have experienced that icky feeling I had back in December and the craving for more disappears. Oddly, indulging feels so good after a season of clean living, but it’s the indulging that ultimately leaves me feeling bad. Call me a wimp, but I hate feeling bad.

So the off-season, as decadent as it was, was good for me. My mind feels better, ready to take on the challenges of 2013, and my body has once again embraced running. If it took overindulging to get me to finally quit sugar, then I’d say the off-season was my most productive yet.

I love that.

I didn’t set a PR at Chicago although the course is flat and easy (except for that hill at mile 26 – what was up with that?). The crowd of runners felt spread out so while there was still a lot of bobbing and weaving, it felt like less than in NYC (could also be that I expected it this time) so I often had clear space in which to run. I really have no excuse for not setting a PR. Except one.

With my friends Heather and Amy, we had set our goal as arriving at the starting line uninjured. All of us had battled piriformis issues in the past year. They also experienced other injuries, but I stayed pretty faithful to my sore butt. Before beginning training, I took five weeks off from running to rest and heal from the winter season. When I started to see my chiropractor, my hamstring was so tight there was little she could do other than massage and perform little active release therapy. As the muscles deteriorated from not running, she was able to dig into my hamstring and piriformis with such great zeal that, had she not been a friend of mine, I might have slugged her. By the time I started to run again, I was as pain-free as I had been in years. I made some changes in my training plan to keep myself that way.

I added two things into this training regimen: yoga and lifting weights. I confess I was not actually a fan of yoga but I did it occasionally because it’s good for me. I forced myself to yoga every Monday following my long run on Sunday. Sometimes I went twice a week if I needed extra stretching. It started to feel good to get stretched out after the tightness of the long run set in. As I became more familiar with the routine and calls and poses, I could finally not look around the room for cues, which induced comparison to others, but instead focus on my own movements. One instructor talked about hand placement, something I’d never heard any other instructor do, and so I changed how I positioned my hands in downward dog and the pain in my wrists lessened. The more yoga I did, the less painful it became. Both challenging and relaxing, so that finally, after 60-plus classes, I started to like it.

The other addition to this training plan, lifting weights, never materialized. Never once. I also did less cross-training than I thought I would: fewer bike rides, no swimming at all.  Chicago is flat pavement so for no reason other than sheer desire and pleasure, I ran a hilly dirt trail once or twice a week. I did hill repeats which could have done damage to my hamstrings but instead strengthened my legs and lungs and resolve. I even I visited my acupuncturist to work on balance issues.

When I trained for my first marathon, I followed my training plan religiously. In training for Chicago, I blew off midweek runs if my body felt too fatigued, and I pushed the weekend long runs if I felt capable of more. I finally managed to pull off three 20-mile training runs (I’d only managed two before). The training plan evolved from edict to suggested guidelines. Before I left for Chicago, I evaluated how my training had gone, and decided that, overall, it went better for this marathon than any before it. I told myself this was enough, this was already a success.

A funny thing happened in the two weeks before the Chicago Marathon. Even though I sometimes mentioned my original goal of reaching the starting line uninjured, I had grown to take that for granted, and a new goal emerged: PR. I hoped to run a 4:45, ten minutes better than my NYC time. I felt strong and pain-free and ready to do this.

For the first miles, I was on pace for a PR. Then I slowed down, maybe it was because I delayed my nutritionally needs, maybe it was simple fatigue, so odd to feel that I was putting in the same effort but the pace on my watch had dropped dramatically, nowhere near what it had been in the earlier miles. I plugged along puzzling over this, trying to pick up the pace, unable to, but never thinking of stopping or walking, just running my little heart out, no matter what. I watched the crowds, I sang a little, I rode the pony when Gangnam Style blasted out from sidewalk speakers. I did the best I could.

I crossed the finish line 6 minutes slower than NYC. I admit I was disappointed. I didn’t know what went wrong. It wasn’t a bad time, it certainly wasn’t my slowest, but it’s not what I wanted. I still felt accomplished but dismayed at my falling off when I felt so strong and capable otherwise.

After I returned home, I downloaded the data from my watch. I was surprised, and pleased, to see that I was on pace for a PR for the first 19 miles of the marathon. Nineteen miles. Somewhere after that, the wheels fell off the bus, and my splits are dramatically slower although still fairly consistent with each other. I felt both hopeful for the future since I had managed to pull off 19 miles on pace without much effort, wondering what I could do to run all 26 miles on pace, and disheartened knowing that I only get one shot at this a year. A lot of work and still I might miss it again next time.

Then this occurred to me: If I wanted a PR, I would have to train for a PR.

Brilliant, eh? But really, my training had delivered me exactly what I had aimed for: pain-free running. It was only in the last two weeks — because I was pain-free — that I had changed my goal. In other words, I had been so successful, that I had forgotten all about the achievement, and moved ahead to setting a new goal. Honestly, I just have to laugh at myself.

So now I feel pretty good about the Chicago Marathon. I’m starting to see that maybe some marathons are for accomplishing and some are for building. Chicago, with its skyscrapers and breakwaters and corralled river, was a builder for me. And now I’m already looking at training plans and methods and deciding what to do next. The marathon, this one as has all the others, has offered up the same question it always does: If I can do this, what else can I do?

I mean, I had that mastered for years. So why is this last two weeks before the marathon, two weeks of reduced running, of rest, recovery, and relaxation, so darn hard?

I remember when I ran my first marathon back in 2008. I was unsure I could complete the distance. I had followed my training plan almost to the letter (I think I missed two runs over the 16-week plan). I had done everything I could to prepare, everything I could to insure I could finish the marathon. I had started running as a way of coping with my son’s enlistment in the Marines, then kept running longer and farther with each deployment. Now he was discharged and on to his new life as a student, but I still needed to run. It had become my coping mechanism for everything, and this marathon was to be my proof of strength. The time to taper came, so important to heal the body before pushing it through the longest run of my life, and that’s when I discovered that tapering is the hardest part of training.

By nature, I want to do things to make life, stuff, the world better. I have always believed that effort is better than apathy, that maybe you can’t always fix everything but you can at least try. What would you be if you didn’t try? Heck, I’m the one who persistently worked with my younger son to teach him how to perform tasks he has no aptitude for and how to get along with others, thinking that if I just worked a little harder I could help him be “normal.” And, to some degree, it worked. He managed to get through high school. And I’m the one who has been writing for years, having written three books now, all unpublished, yet I continue to plug away at it because it might still be possible, if I just work a little harder.

Tapering is the opposite of doing. The hay is in the barn, we say. But for me, that is so hard to believe. How do I know that I have done everything I could? What if there was something else I could have done, that unknown thing, that would have made all the difference? What if adding strength-training to my running made me stronger, less likely to fail during the big run? What if the next agent I sent my books to was the one who loved my work? What if I had pursued a diagnosis for Paul that I suspected, and feared, all along in my heart? Those things could have radically changed things. Or not. It’s impossible to tell. And the way I normally reassure myself, to make me feel more confident that the hay is indeed in the barn, is to do more.

Before that first marathon, I wanted to climb out of my skin during taper. I was fretful enough about the marathon but then to take away my coping mechanism seemed cruel. But I did as the plan called for, and I let my muscles relax and my anxiety grow, and that anxiety grew into determination to see this thing through. It built up, pile upon pile, until when race day came, I couldn’t wait to run to prove myself but also to relieve myself of the accumulated tension. When I finally ran, I felt suddenly happy to be able to do this, this amazing thing that was far more than I ever thought myself capable of, this beautiful thing that came to me through taking on hard things, like my older son’s deployments and now, my younger son’s disability. Where tapering makes me feel weak with not-doing, running the marathon makes me feel the strength I have developed by all that I have done.

So, I’ve been tapering for four days now with ten to go. This is my fourth marathon so I know the process better, so I relax better, so I embrace the growing doubt. The hay is in the barn, I say, and I try to believe it, that I have stored enough, but really, there is no way of knowing. Not until marathon day. In ten days, all will be revealed.

Last Sunday I ran 15, then hopped a plane to Daytona for a week of work. I’d had some difficulty on that run (I’ll spare you the details but will say that maple leaves make excellent toilet paper), but I thought I’d be right as rain in a day or so. On Monday evening, I went to yoga, a place I’ve been to before in Ormond Beach but where the practice is a bit different from what I’m used to. Still, I thought I’d run on Tuesday morning, but then found I needed sleep instead. I’ll run Tuesday night, I promised myself, but then indulged in the free dinner and wine in the hotel lobby, and couldn’t face getting on the treadmill after that. A longer run on Wednesday morning, I pledged, must be in the morning because I was going to dinner with a friend on Wednesday night. But when morning came, I didn’t feel like slogging along on the treadmill, going nowhere. Thursday morning: nope, I wanted to use the early time for writing instead; Thursday evening: damn free dinner and wine, my last night of solitariness before returning to my real life. Friday would be a long day: work all day, then flying home, a day already slated to last 18 hours if I didn’t run, even longer if I did. But when I awoke, I felt like moving. Finally. So I walked a bit on the treadmill, then ran a couple of miles, then walked a bit more. Just four miles but it felt good to get the blood moving again.

Because I didn’t get to bed until after midnight, I wasn’t sure I’d be up in time to run with a group of MIMs who were starting at 7 (instead of the usual 8). But I woke up in time and it was such a sweet group of girls who were going to run at a comfortable pace for me, and after a week of much needed alone time, I was ready for company that would ease me back into my real life. So I ran five with them, feeling the indulgence of food and wine of the week before, but also feeling fueled instead of drained. Then, instead of taking off for the farmer’s market, I decided to walk with a dear friend and a new MIM for three miles. This could have been a bad idea since I had at least a ten-mile run in the morning but I felt fine, even energetic.

On Sunday morning, I met my Chicago MIMs and several others for a flat ten-miler that started in the dark. It was a fine run, and since Heather was doing it again, I thought I might too. But the idea of running the same dull route again didn’t appeal and I wasn’t sure I wanted to do another ten anyway, so I took off on my own. I followed the Old Erie Trail, taking it further than I had before, getting off the trail to make the turn back to town, but then I couldn’t find the trail entrance. So I kept running on the road, not lost, but not running any planned route. I checked my Garmin occasionally to keep me on track for nutrition. I found another entrance to the trail, doubled back to where I missed the other entrance so I’d know where to find it in the future, then ran it in its entirety to where it met up with the canal path. If felt good to be just running and exploring. No conversation, just discovery. It’s an amazing thing to be able to do this, to use the endurance of my feet and legs and lungs and heart to discover new places in this place I have lived most of my life. On the canal path, I turned right towards the city, not left towards town where I had parked my car. I thought I’d run to the little bridge that separates the canal from a pond just to say hello to the cattails. Then I turned and started the run back. By this time I was at 17 or 18 miles, and I calculated new turns to take me to hidden paths that I love to complete the miles up to 20. Or rather, 21. I got inspired by a young friend (with 2 kids under 2, one of whom she’s nursing) who is training for her first marathon and completed a 21-miler in training, rarely done for first-timers, and so I thought that maybe I could do it too. I had always wanted to do a 21 or 22 miler in training but never had. So I pushed through, completing the last bit of trail I could fine, then running through the village, past people going for coffee, out for a walk with their dogs, and I wanted to tell them “I just ran 21 miles!” but I didn’t because I know what crazy looks like (I do have a mirror). When I returned to the parking lot where my car waited for me, Heather and Steve were there, happy for me that I had such a good run.

The point of this isn’t to boast about my 21-miler (although I’ll take that) or that I ran 33 miles in 3 days (I’ll take that too). It’s that listening to my body when it didn’t want to run, then allowing it to run the way it wanted to, worked out better than if I had forced myself to run. If I had any idea, back in my Daytona hotel room, that I was swapping three boring treadmill runs for one sensational run all over town, finding new trails, blowing snot-rockets in the woods – heck yeah, I’d have happily made that trade. I’m still working on the part about not feeling guilty when missing runs, I’m not quite there yet, but every experience like this, where listening and patience and rest, even indulgence, brings such rewards goes a long way to keeping both my mind and my body feeling good.

I’ve been looking forward to this week as others might look forward to vacation. I am so fortunate to work with people I genuinely like and respect and do work that, even after 30 years of technical writing (really? has it been that long?) that I still find fun and challenging. One of the downsides of working from home is that I miss the camaraderie. I miss being in the thick of things, of getting a new idea for something based on a casual comment dropped by someone talking about something completely different than I encounter in my cloistered world. I don’t have a specific cubicle to work in so I move to wherever is available. This week I’m sitting with the technical support staff, and these guys are talkative and funny and knowledgeable and helpful, and I’m thoroughly enjoying it. That is, when I break concentration on my own work to listen in. Since I’ve been here, I’ve had hyper-focused work days which feels so nice from the scattered, trying to get too many things done days of last week. I’ve gotten a lot done and I can’t wait to get back at it when I’m done with this morning writing.

I do talk to Paul every day, checking in to make sure he’s OK and doing what he needs to do. And he calls or texts me with what he and Hobo are doing. My time away is good for him too, a good chance to practice taking care of himself as he will have to do if he really wants to live independently as he claims (and I believe) he does. I love him and am devoted to him, but I need a break from him every now and then. And he needs a break from me. We are a lot of work.

So this week, when the non-emotional work has been good and Paul has been fine, I’ve taken a lot of time for myself. I’ve eaten a lot of free meat (chicken wings on Monday, pulled pork on Tuesday, then out to dinner last night with a friend for a big juicy steak). I have had wine every day. I no longer buy wine at home, even the $4.49 bottle is out of my price range. To have a glass of wine out is way too expensive, plus I’m so leery of driving even within the legal limits since Heather was killed. I admit I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the free wine from the lobby taken back to my room in a plastic cup and drank alone while reading or watching The Voice. On other trips, it has been a treat to watch the cable channels I no longer get at home (last time, I watched one episode after another of my beloved What Not To Wear), but this time I’m turning on the TV for just an hour in the evening, never watching from bed (another luxury for me!), just not much interested in being spoon-fed entertainment. I finished one book that I started months ago then lost focus on, and now I have started another, with yet another lined up to go. I can’t tell you when I started that first book – when I’m stressed, reading is impossible (when Nick was in Iraq, I could only flip through magazines, then as soon as he landed on American soil, I could read books again, go figure). I brought enough running gear to get me through three runs and I have not run even once since I’ve been here. I have plenty of time, I just don’t feel like doing it.

So maybe this isn’t the kind of vacation you think of when you think of Daytona Beach. Sand, sun, surf, boats, clubs, speedway and nearby theme parks, right? Sure that might be a lot of fun, but it’s also a lot of work (at least for me), and what I’m doing now is fulfilling and restful. Recovery.

I do feel a little bad that I’m not running. The Chicago Marathon is less than a month away and my last two long runs have not been all that successful. I’m on prednisone for a rash (caused by an allergy to ragweed that I cleared from my garden a few weeks ago) and running is so painless on steroids, feels so good, that I feel like I should take advantage of it. But I just don’t want to do it, don’t want to push my mind to push my body to do it. This will be my 4th marathon and you might think that I have enough experience and confidence to know that this break will be OK, maybe even good to let my body heal up from various aches, but I don’t know that to be true, I only hope that it is. We’ll see. I can’t go back and do Tuesday’s 3-miler or Wednesday’s 8-miler so I’ll get back to it when I get home this weekend and back to my real life.

For now, I’m savoring this vacation, this much needed break from being who I need to be when I am home, and being here as only me, the simplified me.