One hundred days of excellent excuses

It's been over three months since I've worked out.

Yep. You read right.

Over one hundred days since I've laced up the running shoes and hit the road, trails or yoga mat.

For those of you who know me, and what I do for fun and work, you may now bring your bottom jaw back up to it's full, upright and locked position.

"Wow! So how's that workin' out for ya'?" I hear you ask politely.

Not well.
Not well at all, my friends.
Sleep is not sweet.  I am not sweet.
Despite sharing a home with five other saints,
My hormone induced personality disorders are really not sweet.

There are lots of excellent reasons for my longtime departure from what I know to be good and right for body and soul:

• I've been very, very busy doing...er...farm stuff.
• I've been lonely.
• I've been out of sorts, off my game, upside down.
• The roads here are a death trap.
• Cars pass on the shoulder at 60 miles per hour.
• My children should not witness their mother as road-kill.
• I don't have a running buddy.
• I don't have a workout group.
• I miss All About Athlete Austin something fierce
• It's been raining, a lot.
• My fourth toe on my right foot really hurts.
• I'm out of shape and kind of embarrassed.
• It's really, really humid here.
• The effort required to even think about interviewing/joining a gym is more that I can fathom.
• I HATE running on the treadmill.
• The cost of joining a gym here is more than David will be able to ever fathom.
• Did I mention I've been really, really busy on the farm?
• Just so, so busy.
• Crazy busy.
• Doing
• Farm
• Stuff

Blah.  Blah.  Blah.

As a coach, I've been sniffing out excuses masquerading as excellent reasons from thousands of athletes over the last decade.  Each person, including me, thinks she is the lone exception to the "make time for exercise" rule.  Our excuse feels legitimate and oh-so-important.

Let's just call a spade a spade, shall we? My excellent list of reasons for why I don't bother to exercise each passing day is a growing heap of lame excuses that's starting to get really moldy and stink.

So, today I have to coach myself.  This list may help you in an endeavor where you need a little push.

• Start somewhere.  
• Pick a place today and just start.
• A little is better than nothing.
• For real.  Ten minutes is better than no minutes.
• It adds up.
• People are always nicer than you think.  
• Smile, be humble, be brave.
• No one is looking at you.
• No-one is that busy.  
• Especially me.
• Busy, productive people need exercise the most.
• Stress will come out somewhere.  
• Best if it comes out in streams of sweat instead of a huffy-puffy attitude.
• My children really need a happy mom.  
• My husband truly deserves a pleasant wife.
• Deep sleep is one great reward of physical effort.
• When I am sleeping deeply I don't think of the stink bugs under the dresser.
• Exercise makes you think about what you eat and drink.
• You do become more "health" conscious.
• Because the effort shouldn't be wasted.
• Don't wait for the right moment, feeling, weather report or personal invitation
• Just start somewhere.

I'll let you know how it works out for me.  Will you?

That kind of woman

"The best way to run faster... is to run faster." I bet I stated this at some point in every speed workout the last decade.  How annoying if you were at every one.

Sorry 'bout that.

Sure, there are plenty of techniques available to tweak running form and improve speed, but at some point, you must get out there with all your light feet and perfect strides and run wildly faster than you are comfortable running.

For those of you who dislike rigorous exercise or sweating, even, running fast is scary and requires much of you. Running really fast uses all the life-giving systems in your body and can mess with your mind and even your instincts.

You'll rarely be more nervous, nauseas and sore than before and after speed workouts. Chills and cramps, throwing up a little, feeling light-headed and overwhelmed are just par for the course.

Sounds fun, huh?  Makes you just want to skip on out the door in your Nikes?

I remind myself of these truths as I am eye-balling two new challenges at the moment.

1. "The best way to become a better writer...is to write".
2. "The best way to become a better wife...is to be a better wife".

You might have one to add to the list?

In regards to the first challenge, I now certainly have the time, the space and the quiet for writing.  Lots of space.  And time.  And quiet.

Yesterday my eldest, overly observant son looked at me and and noted brightly "I'm glad to see you did your hair today! It's been awhile and... lately... you've let your hair...um..." He wasn't wrong, and bravely soldiered on, "...but I know it's just because you don't have anyone to meet or anywhere to go".

Sigh. 

I have to borrow a paragraph from my dear friend, Christa Well's blog, that I couldn't write any better.

"...within a few days, I was sure the silence would swallow me up whole.  No friends.  No work.  No idea what do do with the songs I was accumulating.  No place to be.  No family around.  And a painful distance between even the two of us.  Every week was blank, looming at me like open jaws of a great  abyss..."

In the writing realm, I'm timidly lacing up my writing shoes, warming up ever-so-slowly around the outskirts of the track, stretching and taking nervous pee breaks.

To be a better writer, I need to write.

As for becoming a better wife, this takes all of me. The best way to be a better wife is to be a better wife.  I know what a better wife looks like. I know how she speaks gentleness and leans in when she listens. I want to be that woman. How hard can it be to have a warm smile when he returns home?
Apparently for me, impossible.

My wifely techniques are scrubbed and shiny. Family dinners on the farm are nutritional and visual beauty. I clean the splintery oak floors with lavender scented water (no one notices, but I truly don't mind). I grow pretty flowers and crunchy vegetables, tend chickens and birds.  I send the kids off after a hot breakfast and lots of kisses.

Better skills and techniques don't interest me in this moment.  I want to be a better wife in the deepest and most honest places, to run the race long and well, inside and out.

Psalms 119 cheers from the bleachers.

"The unfolding of your words gives light;
It brings understanding to the simple"

Oh, that my heart may be melted and changed through the unfolding of the words that bring life.


Understanding and light to the simple.  Tonight, how will I greet him at the door?