Energy or Relaxation...or Deflation?

“Roll onto your left side for energy or right for relaxation…” It’s a simple choice that marks the end of my yoga class. But for me today, this decision was like Sophie’s choice.

You know how sometimes you get down for no good reason. You just feel like the semi-deflated balloon bobbing in the corner of the room…over by the dust bunnies and crumbs. “So sad,” people will say…"it was a good balloon…gave it’s all.” After all, it began its romance with you like a big, round, bouncy, happy go lucky…no care in the world kinda charmer. Pure delight…at first. Then, it starts to lose its luster…it is inevitably the cause of the fight among the small people of the house that ends with a broken Lego Star Wars ship that took your husband the better part of the weekend to build. It scares the dog and causes a trip on the stairs…tears, frustration, broken precious things…that damn balloon. Then, people don’t even notice it anymore as it pathetically scoots across the floor to its final resting place and surrenders to its fate of a slow and painful shrinkage rather than a quick and last surprise giving pop.

So why do I feel so much like that shrunken and shriveled mess of a balloon in the corner? What is my problem? I really don’t have much if anything to complain about but somehow we all just drift to the corner from time to time. One of the lame reasons for my bum mood is something so small and utterly ridiculous that I hesitate to put it down in writing. But in the name of full disclosure about my effort to go from my no exercise mantra to healthy half marathoner in six months…here you go…

I was wrong….mistaken really or better yet…duped by my own fantasy that I was near the turn around that marked mile five on Monday’s run. I discovered this failure of sorts when I was in the car with my husband on the way up to Missoula yesterday. At first, I protested, “no, that’s the point you said I should turn around! I swear it must have been ten because it took me so damn long!” But then it hit me like a mean tween mood swing…swift, unexpected and unforgiving. I failed. I did NOT run my first ever double digit distance. I instead ran nine…funny how it seems so much less than da dada daa..TEN! Nine. I did see the NO TRESPASSING sign and I jumped to the conclusion that I had arrived at the correct NO TRESPASSING sign but alas…there are two identical looking signs on the long fencing that marks the boundaries of the farm on the side of the road outside of Florence, MT. Now I know. But somehow this simple mistake or overeager blunder makes me so very sad. So very defeated. So blue… left in the corner. Nine not TEN. Humph.

Now…I can hear you already. NINE is nothing to laugh at. It’s longer than a 10K, in fact, 9.3 miles is a 15K. Wholly bee’s knees…that’s a long way. AND it was on my own with no training group classmates or aid stations AND half was in a windy storm that would give Dorothy and Toto something to write home about. SOOooo what’s the big deal? Why so hard on myself for something so stupid. Normally, under some kind of similar circumstances that I’m too tired to come up with by comic example in this moment…I wouldn’t be so dramatically distraught. But mile ten meant something to me. Mile ten represented an unimaginable goal that came into focus. I could see it. I felt it. I believed I had done it. Now I’m faced with striving for it again…gearing myself up and getting it accomplished. So for Sunday’s training run with the group, I’ll strive for the almighty ten again and I’m sure I’ll get there.

In the meantime…back to my choice between “left for energy…right for relaxation.” While in yoga, I chose relaxation with the belief I would caffeine up later for energy. For the future, I fantasize I will somehow manage to get both...and then take a long luxurious 7 minute shower, cover myself in flannel and hit the hay. But for tonight, I will settle for the big belly laughs my son gave me while watching his music program, the cuddles with my daughter on the couch and listening to the baby’s soft breathing as I put him down to sleep. I think just writing this down helped me snap me out of my self-wallowing…and yes, perhaps the beer I had in honor of Cinco De Mayo helped a little too.

After all, tomorrow is another day I get to wake up and say, “I get to go on a run now”

                                                     … no matter the distance or time.