When Lucy
and I first started running, I thought that getting me going would be the
biggest dilemma. I had such a surprise
in store. After I had done all my online
research and found several articles and websites willing to dish out advice for
beginning runners, I went back out and tried again. I began what amounted to a Couch to 5K
program (although I had no idea that’s what it was or that the term even
existed).
On my
second run, I put on my Roo’s again and walked out the door to the cemetery
with a well-developed plan in my head.
Just having a plan was a huge relief to me. I’m a planner. I like to know what’s happening next and
when. I like to have a general idea of
how things are going to go at least a few days in advance. On my first run, I had no plan and no way of
knowing how things might turn out, which is probably why it failed. My plan was a run/walk program. I’d run for 30 seconds, walk for a minute and
repeat this until I made it the full mile around the cemetery. The eventual goal was to up the running time
and reduce the walking time in increments, slowly but surely, until I didn’t
need the walking anymore.
The problem
with this program was that I didn’t have a watch. So on my second run, I took Lucy out and “counted”
in my head 30 seconds, then 60 seconds and so forth. As I got more tired after the first few
cycles, I could tell that my 30 second counts seemed to be going at a quicker
pace while my 60 second counts seemed to get slower and slower. This was ridiculous. Buy yourself a watch lady.
The next
day, I visited Paragon Sports in Union Square and bought a very small key-chain
stopwatch. I also went down to their
shoe section and bought my very first pair of running shoes. I was blown away by the whole process. The employee put me on a treadmill, watched
me run barefoot, “analyzed” my gate on a video screen, and then pointed to a
wall of shoes. I picked out the
prettiest ones. I had no idea what the
difference between anything was, but I did as I was told.
I was
excited to get back out again. My second
run had been reasonably successful and I was ready to do it for real in my new
fancy running shoes. So on try number 3,
I put my running shoes on (wow, what a difference from my worn out Roo’s!), put
Lucy on her leash, and proceeded as normal.
5 minute walk to the cemetery.
Press start on the stopwatch and go!
Wait no,
don’t go. Suddenly Lucy did not want to
run. She was pulling back on the leash,
resisting forward movement. So I beeped
the watch to a stop. I leaned down to
give her some love and got her walking again.
So then I pressed start on the watch again to time my first 30 seconds
and tried to take off. I was jerked very
roughly backwards. I turned around to
see Lucy behind me, 4 feet firmly planted on the ground, using all the muscles
in her body to refuse to move.
What in the
world is going on? How can I have this
70 lb dog, a lab/hound mix who could never get enough running in the dog park,
suddenly decide she will refuse to run?
In the past I had learned that brute force often worked with her when
need be (for example: there is a VERY good sniff on this tree that NEEDS to be
sniffed and I am going to NOT MOVE until I am done sniffing—one yank on the
leash with all my strength would defeat this apparently unstoppable need to
sniff every tree). Lucy is all muscle
and very strong, but I could be strong and stubborn too. I braced my body, grabbed the leash as if
this was the most important game of tug-o-war in my life, and pulled. This got her up and began forward movement,
but as soon as I started my watch again to start going, she was crouched again,
tail between the legs, looks of death and fear all mixed up in her eyes.
I didn’t
know what to do. I was only half way
down one side of the square-shaped cemetery and I had a plan. Plans should always
work out. That’s what plans are
for. I kept repeating this action,
yanking and pulling, starting and stopping, like a child who keeps repeating “no,
no, no, no” over and over and expecting to not have to clean their room
eventually. Finally, Lucy’s stubbornness
beat mine and I turned around and yanked her the whole way home. I dropped her off at the door, shoved her in
angrily, and turned around to go back to my plan.
When I’m
frustrated, my runs often feel amazing.
I was so frustrated at this point that I took off and found it difficult
to stick to my 30 second max running time.
But I wanted to be good, not push it, and not get injured like all the
online articles said. When I was done, I
went home and glared at Lucy for the rest of the night, while she looked at me
innocently, obviously unaware of anything she had done wrong.
According
to my articles, I should only run every other day until my body got
stronger. So the next day we walked and
Lucy was just fine. The day after that,
I took treats with me. When I started my
timer and started running, she predictably planted her paws firmly. I hooked the leash onto my elbow, leaned
forward, and RAN, pulling her forward like a child drags a heavy wagon behind
him. I got to the end of the 30 seconds,
stopped, and gave her a treat. We
repeated this 30 seconds running, treat, and 60 seconds walking around the
entire mile loop. I can only imagine the
image of us running down the sidewalk: me needing to learn forward at a 45
degree angle to gather enough strength to drag
my dog behind me as I ran. I was surprisingly
determined. I was going to be a runner
and so was my dog. That was the whole point! The next time I ran, I brought deli turkey
instead of treats. This kind of worked,
but her reluctance to run was irritating and embarrassing.
It was
after about 3 or 4 of these outrageous dragging sessions when I was sitting at
home watching some TV. Somehow, I must
have turned on the alarm on my watch, which was sitting nearby. It
randomly started beeping. Lucy, who had
been curled cozily in her bed, jumped up, tail between her legs, ran into the
farthest corner of the far away bathroom and started shaking. OH. MY. GOD. The beeping!! Lucy is extremely
sound sensitive. She has hound
ears. She hates loud noises and is even afraid
of something about the sound that fans make.
The first time I turned on a fan on a hot summer day, she ran into a corner,
peed, and shook uncontrollably for 20 minutes.
I felt like
an awful mother. I beeped that stupid high-pitched
timer every 30 to 60 seconds on our runs.
It was torture to her sensitive ears.
No wonder the refusal, the defiance.
She was trying to tell me something.
All that frustration, the dragging, the ridiculousness, the stupid
BEEPING. I should have known.
So again, I
turned to my laptop. I went online and
found the only timer I could find at a teacher-salary price that did not beep. Unfortunately by the time it arrived in the
mail, I had to stop running. But that,
my friends, is the next episode in this adventure…
Cute. :)
ReplyDelete