Seekers of the Why

I go through phases of keeping current with the news.  Sometimes I have weeks or months at a time when I religiously read the paper--or at least the headlines--every morning.  I listen to NPR in the car every day, before and after work (when they're not in the middle of a pledge drive, which happens to be this week).  I feel proud of myself for being an informed, concerned citizen.  I wave my "I have informed opinions!" banner proudly.

But after a few months, I usually start to realize that keeping up with the news is incredibly depressing.  It's also frustrating because you have to hear about things like Washington State senators giving themselves a $30 a day pay raise (per diem when they're in session) when they haven't managed to fit voter-approved Cost of Living Adjustments for teachers into the budget in the last 6 years.  When I start to get overly frustrated or overly sad, I'll fold up my "I have informed opinions!" banner and put it on the shelf.  And I'll take a break from the news for a while.  Typically until I start feeling ridiculously uninformed again.

Right now, I'm in an upswing.  I read the newspaper for at least 10 minutes as I wolf down my breakfast/coffee each morning.  I'm listening to NPR (even with the Spring Pledge Drive giving me a massive guilt trip).  I'm keeping up to date on my countless podcasts as I walk the dogs and run.

But I'm starting to notice something.  There's been a lot of tragedy in the news lately.  I don't know if it seems like a lot because of current swing of my news-following pendulum or if it's actually because there's a lot of tragedy in the news right now.  However, in the past week or two alone, the paper has been filled with updates on the mysterious disappearance of Malaysia flight 370, the crash of the KOMO News helicopter, and the catastrophe of the Oso landslide, to name a few.

Just look at today's headline:

"Enormity of loss" is a hard thing to wake up to.  25 people found dead, 90
still missing after 5 days.  It's hard to be positive about the prospects of
what the news will be for the days to come.

Take a close look at those red subheadings though.  To the left, an expression of just how horrible this incident really is.  To the right, a speculation.

The speculation...that's what really bothers me about it all.  I might stick with the news on a regular basis, despite the sadness of each tragedy, if it weren't for the speculation.

Every morning as I open the paper and watch lives turned into death toll tallies, I read as news reporters speculate on one never-ending question: "Why?"

I don't blame them for asking the question.  Asking "Why?" seems to be something innate in us as humans.  With discovery of each new tragedy, the immediate focus of our minds always becomes "Why?" Why did the Tsarnaev brothers bomb the Boston Marathon?  Why did Adam Lanza choose an elementary school as the target of his shooting spree?  Why did flight 370 disappear?  Why did the chopper go down?  Why did the landslide happen?

I am not exempt from all of this questioning.  I want to know why.

I even seek the "Why?" in more personal and even often trivial aspects of my life.  Why couldn't I hit my sub-4:00 marathon last year?  Why am I injured?  Why did I knowingly decide to consume so much dairy in the last 2 days, resulting in an extremely uncomfortable multiple-bathroom-stop run today?  Why am I 30 and alone (see previous question)?

And after adopting Penny, guess what the most common question I get is.  If you guessed "Why?," I am not giving you a gold star.  Because it was way too obvious. "Why?"  "Why was Penny the one?" "Why was she at the shelter?"

"Why would someone give up this adorable little destroyer
of well-made beds?"

We are all Seekers of the Why.  It is undeniably in our nature, despite the fact that finding out way will never change the outcome.  I don't know why Penny was there.  I don't know why every couple months I decide that I don't care if my body hates dairy.  I don't really know why the Seattle RNR Marathon sucked for me last year.  I don't know why the plane disappeared, and I don't know why people kill other people on purpose.

And if I did know the answers to all these why questions, it won't change what happened.  I will still have a painful knee.  Penny will still be my dog.  There will still be a classroom full of first graders, including their teacher, that lost their lives way too soon.  There will still be 90 people missing 5 days after a massive landslide.  There will still be 239 people that disappeared over an ocean somewhere.

Yet we still ask "Why?".  We search for answers, often in vain.  But I see one main division in the our world of Seekers of the Why.  I may be missing something here, because I have done absolutely zero research on this besides searching through my own thoughts, so I claim no expertise.  But as I see it, Seekers of the Why fit into two groups: Seekers of the Why for Blame and Seekers of the Why for Change.

Let me explain more fully:

Seekers of the Why for Blame are looking to pin fault.  They want retribution.  They want punishment.  They may even want revenge.  This is not a bad thing.  Consequences should be sought for horrid actions and neglect of responsibilities (safety, supervision, etc).  But sometimes I feel as though Seekers of the Why for Blame are going too far.

This is what bothers me about the right-hand subheading of today's paper.  Landslides happen.  Maybe they logged a little too close.  Maybe warnings to residents of their unsafe habitat were ignored.  But I don't think that anyone can be blamed for this.  We live on a changing, shifting planet.  Blame who you want, but when it comes down to it Mother Nature will always have the final say.

It's the speculation that drives me nuts.  There was an article last week about the pilot of the KOMO news helicopter.  According to the reporter, he worked 2 jobs.  He could have been over-exhausted.  Are we so desperate to find blame that we are willing to speculate without fact even before the dead have been mourned?

Seekers of the Why for Change are looking for something different.  They are looking to learn something from the mess we've gotten ourselves into.  Why did Adam Lanza and the Tsarnaev brothers carry so much hate?  Why was there a neighborhood so close to an unsteady cliff prone to landslides?

Seekers of the Why for Change may believe in consequences for the guilty, but they also believe that is not enough.  We need to know why the guilty became guilty so that it doesn't happen again.  Place blame where it is necessary, but until we know why those at fault walked the broken path they walked, we are doomed to repeat their errors.

I think that both factions of Seekers of the Why exist because we are human.  We are faulty and error-prone and imperfect.  We need both kinds of Seekers and cannot have one without the other.  But in the news, I've noticed a trend of reporting in only one category.

And I guess my question is:

"Why?"

How getting faster spoiled running for me

Somebody posted this article on Facebook the other day about how being a "slow" runner is really all in your head.  The writer made a lot of really good points.  For example:

1)  "While thinking you’re slow may seem harmless, every time you preface a statement with the phrase, 'I know I am slow, but …' you condition your mind to believe that you can never be fast."

and:

2) "The feeling you get after a new PR, the satisfaction from a tough workout well done, and the disappointment from a bad performance all feel the same no matter how fast you are."

and of course this:

3)  "Unless you’re Kenenisa Bekele, Mo Farah or Galen Rupp, chances are there is always going to be someone faster than you. Fast is relative."

then she drove it all home with this:

4)  "...speed is merely a state of mind."

None of the points in the article are earth-shattering revelations for me.  They are things that I've told myself time and time again as I realize that I am giving myself a mental beat down for "going slow" on runs.  They are things I've tried to convince myself of over and over in the past year.  But I still have yet to truly believe them.

And to be honest, in the realm of my running world, I'm not slow.  It was just three years ago that I was amazed by my ability to complete runs with average paces under 10 mins/mile.  But now, not all that much further down the road, I find that I feel a quiet inner disappointment every time I finish a weekday run that clocks in at an average pace slower than an 8:40.

As much as I mentally tell myself to listen to my body, to do what it tells me to, and to be happy with what I can do right now, in the not too far away corners of my mind, I am disappointed in myself.  And then I get ashamed of my disappointment.  Because, in reality, I know it's silly.  I'm still recovering from an injury.  I've been running much less than I usually do.  I can't expect myself to be hitting the same paces as I was a year ago while in the midst of two consecutive marathon training seasons.  But it seems like I just can't keep that nagging negativity out of my head.

So what do I do on runs?  I push myself.  I run fast.  I try to hit the paces I'm looking for.  As much as I preach about "listening to your body," I've been ignoring mine.  So how do I feel at the end of each run?  Exhausted, disappointed, frustrated...and then to top it all off: ashamed that I'm feeling all of those things.

How did I get this way?

When I first started running, "being fast" was not a goal, even in the farthest back, dustiest corners of my mind.  Back then, I ran because I had a crazy dog who needed to run more than my desire not to.  And I ran because I wanted to feel good about myself again.  Other reasons began to emerge after I learned to like running.  I ran because it became that wistfully quiet, enjoyable time of day that I'd look forward to each afternoon as I sent my first graders out the door.  I ran because it was the one time of day that I got to be alone with my thoughts.  I ran because it calmed me.  And it helped me make sense of the endless number of thoughts that traipse through my mind on a daily basis.

I ran because I enjoyed running.

But because I enjoyed running, over the course of a couple years, I started getting faster.  I went from a 2:16 first half marathon in 2009 to a 1:48 half last May.  I went from a 4:52 first marathon to a 4:18 a couple years later.  

I didn't try to get faster.  It just kind of happened.  Sometimes, after runs, I'd look down and my watch and realize that that run was way faster than it felt.  And then that "fast" pace would slowly become the norm.  Until I would look down again after a run one day, and find I'd accidentally gone faster again.  And the new fast would become the new norm.  And the cycle would repeat.  Over and over again.  Without really trying.  
Everything felt great.  I loved running and I kept getting faster.  Nothing could be better.

But then one day, I made a fateful decision.  I decided that I wanted to be faster.  I wasn't just going to let it happen anymore.  I was going to make it happen.

And that's where it all fell to pieces.  That's kinda where I fell to pieces.

After completing the Goofy Challenge last January, I was on a high.  I felt strong, and I felt fast.  So for my fifth marathon, I decided to set my first ever specific time goal.  I had had goals before (to finish, to PR, to have fun), but I had never set a specific time goal.  For marathon #5, I wanted to break 4 hours.

Four hours.  A very specific time.  With very specific paces.  And very specific numbers.  And I can get a little obsessive when it comes to numbers.

So when I put a number in my marathon goal, everything became about that number.  Runs became less about stress relief and enjoyment and more about clocking paces and being faster.  My favorite day of the week in marathon training (long run day!), became somewhat torturous as I pushed myself faster and further than I needed to go.  Running became less and less enjoyable with each passing week.

And the result of all that unhappy training?  Not exactly what I was hoping for.  Twenty three minutes slower than what I was hoping for, to be exact.

And then I pushed running to the side for a bit.  I tackled biking and swimming and my first half iron distance triathlon.  Then I walked a half marathon with my mom.  And then my knee started hurting and I faced months of slowly progressive recovery.

And now here I am.  Stuck in this hole of never feeling good enough, or more specifically, "fast" enough.

So not unexpectedly, as I stare down the oncoming road of Eugene Marathon training, I've been getting a little stressed out.  I thought I would be more physically and mentally ready by now.  The Eugene Marathon is supposed to be my huge comeback from the disaster that my last marathon was.  The Eugene Marathon is supposed to be my redemption.  It is supposed to be me finally achieving that sub-4 hour marathon.

But that's a lot of pressure.

So I've made a new decision.  I'm not going to do that to myself again.  I'm resetting my goals.  Instead, I'm going to aim for a PR.  I think that's reasonable enough.  A sub-4:18 seems much more achievable than a sub-4:00.  While I may always secretly wish for a 4 hour marathon, I'm not going to put pressure on myself to make it this one.

With that decision made, I already feel myself breathing a little easier.  I feel a weight lifted off my shoulders that I didn't really know was sitting there.  With my new "who cares about fast" frame of mind, I went for a run today.  I ran 4.5 miles and I tried my hardest not to look at my paces as I stuck to my 8:1 run/walk intervals (unfortunately I can't leave the watch behind because I'd be unable to keep track of the intervals).  If I felt like I had started breathing a little too hard and not enjoying the run, I slowed it down.  I went the pace that my body wants to go right now.

At the end of the run, the first thing I did (of course...) was check my pace.  9:12 min/mile.  I tried really really hard to be happy with this.  And I was.  But I still felt that internal pull of disappointment--because I'm not perfect and this change isn't going to happen overnight.  I realized that this is going to take some time.  I need to retrain my brain.  I've been feeding it these negative thoughts for a year, after all it had known was positivism for it's 4 years of prior running.  I need to start telling it positive things again.  Until it starts to believe it.

And as for the speed, here's my new theory: Right now, my body can do what it can do while still recovering from a bum knee and months of low-mileage running.  I'm going to let my body do what it can do and not push it.  I want to finish each run feeling good, not feeling as though I'd like to keel over and die and not run for at least a week.

If, after weeks or months of "feel good" running, my speed naturally returns to me, great.  If not, this is where I'm at.  And I'm going to try my absolute best to learn to be okay with that.

Little adjustments

Sometimes I think that it is the small, incremental changes in life that are the hardest to handle.  Big changes are...well...big.  They require a complete overhaul of life, a paradigm shift, or a drastic leap (in one direction or the other) away from everything that you are used to.  While I would never make the claim that these big changes aren't difficult, it's just that adjusting to them and accepting them as they occur can sometimes happen more suddenly.

For comparison's sake, let's think about when you wake up in the morning.  Say, for example, you wake up at 7:30 every morning (lucky you).  As you start the week, you realize that on Wednesday morning you have a very early meeting and you are going to have to wake up at 5:30, 2 hours earlier, in order to make it on time.  While you probably will dread this, here's what you might do to prep for it: on Tuesday night, you might decide to skip a workout or happy hour and make dinner early.  You'll put yourself to bed early.  Then in the morning when that 5:30 AM alarm goes off, it still sucks, but at least you're prepared for it. [note: this, of course, only applies to planned big changes.]

Now, keeping in mind that 7:30 typical wake up, let's say that Friday morning you realize that you have to stop by the grocery store on the way to work and pick up some snacks for a staff lunch party.  To accommodate for the extra time this will take, you decide to set your alarm for 7:15.  Since it's only a 15 minute difference, you don't alter your Thursday evening schedule.  You may try to get in bed a little early but don't really fall asleep until your normal time anyways.  And then in the morning when the alarm goes off, you can't believe it's already time to get up.  To be able to sleep for another 15 minutes would feel amazing, but you peel yourself out of bed anyways.  And for the rest of the day, that 15 minutes lingers with you.  By the end of the day, you're exhausted.

For those planned big changes, you prep yourself.  You get yourself ready.  You make sure you are set up for success when that big change arrives.  But for little changes, you think to yourself "eh, no big deal" and let them arrive.  But as little as that change is, you feel it like a big one.  Because you didn't ready yourself for it.  It throws you off kilter enough for you to notice a difference, but not necessarily want to do anything about it.

When it comes to change, I'd say I've done a pretty good job learning how to handle the big ones.  A few major job changes, a cross-country move to a city where I knew exactly one person, becoming a marathoner--all these things have helped me to feel comfortable with pre-planned big changes.  In fact, oftentimes I look forward to these changes.  Because I usually choose to make them happen at just the point when I need a change.

But little changes...that's a different story. I hate waking up 15 minutes early (even though I have do it every Thursday morning).  And that's the smallest of the little changes.  But when I have to make little changes, or adjustments to my life, things seem to be off kilter for longer than the big changes.  It takes me a lot longer to find my equilibrium when I'm changing things just a little bit at a time.

Take my running right now.  I'm still not fully recovered.  I've been injured for almost 5 months now.  And I still can't figure out the balance that I need to stay healthy.  Every week, I run on different days, for different distances, at different paces, and I've been slowly altering my run/walk intervals.  But no matter what I do, no matter how little or how much I push myself, I can't find the balance that makes everything feel better again.

Running kind of feels like this right now.  I'm out there and I'm doing it and
for the most part I'm enjoying it, but I have no idea what's coming up around
that next bend in the road.

Last Wednesday, I went for an amazing run.  I was itching to put some miles on my legs, but hesitating to do too much.  I've been sticking to Green Lake loops lately so that I can cut things short if anything starts to hurt.  But I decided to be daring on Wednesday.  I decided to tackle one of my hillier, longer loops through Ballard.  It was pouring rain, and after a trying day with my first graders, all I wanted to do was run--and run fast.  So I did.  I still stuck to my current 8:1 interval, but even with the walk breaks included, I logged some paces I haven't seen on a 5+ mile run in quite a while.  It was one of those days where everything felt strong and great--even the rain.  I let the rain soak through me and pound against me, and it only made me fight harder.  While nothing is pain-free yet, I was almost able to forget about my nagging knee.

Then I let myself rest for 2 days and went out to coach a TNT practice on Saturday morning.  We took some hilly loops through Discovery Park and Magnolia, and I was less than 2 miles into the run when my knee pain intensified and didn't stop for the rest of the 12 mile run.  It was the first time I ever had to consciously make the choice to try to run less miles during a coaching run.  So frustrating.

I can't help but continue to be frustrated with the ups and downs of running for me when all these little adjustments I keep trying to make just don't seem to be working quickly enough.  And then I remember that they are little adjustments.  I need to give them time.  I definitely have a lot more good days than bad days now.  But what's funny is, as much as I have an endless font of patience for my first graders and my job, I have very little patience when it comes to running.  I want to be better and I want to feel good now.  I'm tired of all these little adjustments that might slowly be working their way towards an equilibrium.

But running isn't the only thing I'm making adjustments for right now.  There's also this little lady:

My lovely little snuggle-muffin.

Lucy and I have been spending that last 2 weeks adjusting to life with Penny.  And the strangest thing about adding Penny to our family was that it wasn't a big change.  When I made the whim of a decision to bring Penny home, I expected life to be very different.  I expected to have to make some big changes to me and Lucy's comfortable routines.

Somewhat unsurprisingly considering serendipity of events that occurred in order for me and Penny to meet and quickly fall in love, Penny has absorbed herself with ease into my and Lucy's life.  However, once I realized that Penny wasn't a drastic change in our lives, it became more challenging for me to make the little adjustments necessary for Penny.

The biggest example is our morning walks.  Penny is still going through this hesitant, not-sure-about-walking thing.  I've realized that it mainly is a result of anything to do with the sky.  She definitely does not like rain.

I bought her this snazzy little jacket.  She loves it so much she even helps
me put it on her.

She also doesn't like things in the sky.  We passed by a park and she spotted some sort of toy hovercraft in the sky (I never would have noticed it, but she zoned in on it until I was able to spot it).  She was shaking with fright for the rest of the walk.  She also doesn't seem to like tall walls next to her or loud buses.

In general, we've had to make a lot of adjustments on our walks.  I've changed up some of our routes.  In the mornings, if it's raining, Penny only comes out for a potty break--then we drop her back off at home and Lucy and I continue on our way.  This has eaten into a little bit of Lucy's morning exercise time.

When Penny does join us for long walks, I'm now juggling two leashes and often, since they seem to be quite in sync with their potties, I could also be carrying 2 poop bags along with those leashes until we find a garbage can.

It's not always easy managing both of these two, especially when another
four legged friend walks by.  Penny will wiggle her butt with all her might
with excitement to say hello, which puts Lucy a little on edge and lunging
where she didn't previously.

Every morning/afternoon walk is a question.  How will Penny do?  Where will we be able to go, and how far?  Will she get scared, or will this be an okay walk?  What was once the most relaxing part of my day--a long walk with Lucy--has now become something a little more involved.

Not that I'm complaining.  I love Penny and wouldn't trade her for anything.  It's just a little adjustment.  Which for me, takes a lot of getting used to.

Other small adjustments that I've had to make for Penny include giving up 3/4 of my queen size bed to a 40lb dog, learning to share my overabundance of puppy love equally between two lady-dogs, and learning how to type on a laptop with a dog in my lap.

This puts quite a strain on the finger-typing muscles along the length of
my right arm.

I also can no longer go to the bathroom alone.

"Whatcha doin in here, mom?"

All these little changes, whether from running or Penny, haven't been easy.  But as with any challenge I've faced up until now, I'm learning a ton.  And the biggest benefit I think I'm getting out of all of this?

I'm learning to be flexible.

Flexible with my time.  Flexible with my routines.  Flexible with the trivialities of daily life.

I've always considered myself to be a pretty flexible person when it comes to working with/socializing with people.  But when it comes to my own personal routines, flexibility has never been something I've desired or needed to have in my single (and single-dog) life.  And if becoming more flexible with my personal "me" time is a side-effect of all these small adjustments, I'll take it.  

Now that I'm 30, I figure it's about time I learn to let go of a little bit of that rigidity.  Because I'd hope in the not-too-far-away future, that flexibility will start to come in handy.

And in the meantime, whenever things to start feel a little too overwhelming, I'll just take a look at these two:

And then everything will be all better.