A Gummie Bear Offering

Accepting help isn’t always easy. Accepting your own limitations sometimes seems downright impossible. Yesterday, as I faced a 20 mile training run, I knew I would be the slowest, the most inexperienced and most likely to be the last one to arrive at the finish. And I was right. I just had no idea how right I was.

I started with the group around 9 in the morning in Frenchtown (the site of the starting line for the Marathon in 3 weeks). After talking with a few different expert runners, I decided to take on a new approach of running a mile and walking a minute and then running a mile and so on. This was supposed to save my legs for later in the run…and it did. And the bonus is I feel like I can walk today without being crumbled over like a 97 year old woman.  The only downfall is it really slowed me down (which I wasn’t sure was possible). I know stopping to walk was helpful to keep me injury free and reserve my energy but I wasn’t prepared for just how slow I would run in between these stops. I usually run about 13 minute miles (which is very slow but great for me who thought I’d be running a marathon when pigs took to the skies) but with this new approach I found I was taking 14 to even 15 minutes to get done with a mile. That’s starting to look close to a walker pace. However, I was feeling like I was doing okay and somewhat enjoying the challenge of the twenty mile run.

Then, at mile 8 (site of the second aid station) I realized I was, in deed, last.  But to make it a bit worse, I began to realize the pack of fellow training group runners that I thought I’d be out there with were at least 30 minutes ahead of me. The volunteers at the aid station were extremely nice, offering me the full variety of drink products and various snacks they had and then it happened. Her eyes met mine and she gave me the sympathetic mother look. My AH HA moment struck hard. Oh…I am SO last. She crooked her head and said, “Are you sure you’re doing ok? I mean, we could drive you back.” Oh crap. Is it THAT bad? I wondered to myself. Then I heard myself say, “No no…I’m fine, just slow is all…just started running in January,” I said defending my pace. “I’ll be fine, thank you,” I muttered and I scurried off down the road.

At mile 10, I noticed a truck on the side of the road. I slowed to an even slower walk and removed my headphones. The man walking towards me was obviously a runner…dressed in the uniform and smiling. He timidly asked, “Are you with the running group?” I replied with a half hearted laugh, “yeah” knowing it didn’t look so obvious. He explained he injured himself and couldn’t continue and was just checking to see if anyone else needed a ride back. Someone like me…someone so far behind the others…so sad. I again was tempted but found myself again saying, “no no, I’m fine…just slow…no injuries so I’m just doing fine…but thank you.” I watched him drive away. I wondered…just how far back am I? Should I have gone with him? I continued on…running for 14 minutes walking for one, then walking for just one more minute…then maybe through a song. BUT still going. If I can just get to the next aid station I thought…then I can ask how far back I am…then I can know I can get to the next aid station…then just four more miles after that…I can do this. I start running again…I can do this. I can do…all the sudden a mini-van pulls to the side of the road. It’s full of kids and runners. A young boy runs towards me smiling and holding out a bowl of gummie bears… “Here,” he says, “have some of THESE!” His mom asks, “Are you doing okay? Do you want a ride?” HOLY CRAP…the universe is practically smacking me in the face….TAKE SOME HELP! I look at her wearily and ask, “Where is the next aid station?” She replies, “Well, we just packed up and heard you were out here and wanted to get you some water and check to see if you needed anything,” her voice trails off…she smiles. I give in. I ask her to take me to the next aid station and then I’ll run the rest of the way back to the car.

I get in…sit by the boy with the gummie bears and listen to him explain why he will never be a runner. “I’m hot and I didn’t even run today…YOU were on your 11th mile…almost to 12!” he says excitedly. “I don’t ever want to eat that GU stuff…my mom says it’s made out of boogers!” he says with big eyes. “Tastes like boogers sweetie” she corrects from the front of the van. “Oh, yeah…tastes like boogers,” he says shaking his head. I want to kiss him. I love this kid. As we drive the four miles to the next aid station we pick up another runner with a knee problem and I start to notice the others in the van. The runner that is dizzy and dehydrated. The one that just can’t move anymore and me. I look out the window and see some of my friends struggling up the only hill in the course…it looks brutal. I can’t imagine my survival of it in just a mere three weeks. A wet blanket of guilt comes over me…Why am I in this damn mini-van? I wonder to myself. I need to get out! NOW! I ask when we can pull over but I don’t want them to catch my panic…don’t want to seem ungrateful. Most likely the other aid station wouldn’t have been there for me if I didn’t catch the ride. They would have had to wait an extra hour just for me! The thought of that makes my stomach turn. They probably would have packed up and drove up to me on the course and offered to take me back the car. OR (my mind is racing now) maybe they would have just left entirely…I would have been out on the road alone…no water…no aid…just the sun and me for the next 8 miles. Horrible fate. I can see the headlines now…Local woman stranded and unconscious by fake cow on Clements street…authorities say she refused multiple offers of aid.  So I needed the ride I reason in my head. I tell myself I won’t on marathon day because they will have more aid stations and keep the them up for seven hours...and I will start earlier in the morning and I will have thousands of people around me and I WON'T BE THE LAST ONE (oh, I hope I won't). I know I’ll be alright that day...right? I finally can get out of the van.

I see my friend that just ran the hill and she looks great...beaming with pride because she just killed the hill behind her. I immediately feel guilty to be ahead of some of the others. I sheepishly say to her, "I should be an hour behind you." She reassures me the van ride was okay, "look at how far you've come," she says as she turns to run. 

I start my final four miles. I run most of it. Forget my run to walk ratio. Up ahead I saw a runner lying on the ground. More around me were walking now. Most looked overwhelmed in the heat. I knew they had all ran that hill that I skipped. I run harder to try to make up for it. I walk only when I absolutely have to and only then. I stop for a car to cross the street…look to my left and there it is…I see Hannah’s house. One of the group homes of Youth Homes Inc. and the one where she lives. I almost start crying. I CHEATED I think to myself. I got in that mini-van. Hannah doesn’t get to cheat in her “marathon” when it gets hard. I start running again. I’m so mad at myself. I get lost in my negative spiral of self – doubt. I won’t be able to do this...what was I thinking…I’m the only one out here that has just started running this year…a MARATHON…what the hell…what am I trying to PROVE anyway? I AM nuts.

Then I remembered that little boy in the back of the mini-van…the one that said “I’m hot and tired and I didn’t even run like YOU did.” The little boy that somehow knew I was trying to do something really hard and I needed, God forbid, a little help…and that was OKAY. I then thought of the mini-van in a different way. Maybe it’s a good reminder to help me realize it’s okay to accept some help along the way. Of course it sounds easier than it is done…for all of us from time to time. For Hannah , she is challenged with learning to accept her own situation while avoiding the comparisons to others, learning to accept the care she receives from staff and believing it is genuine and, of course, the area that’s tough for me too…learning to acknowledge limitations, being proud of the accomplishments to date and accepting help while working to improve.

He couldn't have been more than six years old.  He knew I was last.  He said smiling, “Here…have as many gummie bears as you want" as if to say "you deserve it.”  

A special thanks to Coach Anders, The Runner's Edge staff, Run Wild Missoula and all the volunteers that man those aid stations...couldn't do it without you!

An update on Hannah from Youth Homes staff:


Hannah just graduated from the 8th grade last Monday, and what an event! She was excited, but also sad to say goodbye to her friends who will be going to a different high school next year. The whole day turned into "Hannah’s day", and for the first time in months she wanted everyone here involved with her promotion. She asked her primary staff (Jessica) to help her get ready for the "big event"! (When you are an 8th grade middle school girl, it is a BIG DEAL) So, they had a fashion show to find the perfect dress, pick out jewelry, and styled her hair. It was the first time that Hannah really let Jessica fill the role of a family member, and she let it show that it was important to her. She not only wanted her to be part of preparing, but also to be at her promotion for support, as well as the shoulder to cry on after saying goodbye to her friends. This was incredibly significant because Hannah’s hasn’t shown that her relationships with staff are important to her. Lately, she has been putting more effort into pulling away and claiming that we don’t really care about her. It seems that these past claims weren’t how she actually felt, and it was an uplifting experience to see that she may be beginning to allow herself to have meaningful relationships with us.

With the marathon coming up, and having Kim run for Hannah, Hannah also seems to see that she is also supported by the community. After talking with her about it several times, she made it clear it made her feel good to know that the community cares for kids in group homes. She is shocked that someone she doesn’t know cares about her enough to run in her honor. Hannah said, "To have someone run a marathon in my honor means that the person wants to do something for you and wants to represent you and get to know you. When someone runs for me, I feel happy and like someone knows I'm here on this earth." These are those little moments of sunshine that she can sit back and contemplate about when things are tough.

Therapy has been rough. Real rough. Hannah continues to compare herself to the other girls in the home, and is extremely jealous about the attention and support one girl gets from her mother in particular. Hannah has been rejecting of staff care, support, direction, nurturing, etc. She has been bottling up her emotions, and then letting them come out sideways, through frustrated tears and frantic behavioral and emotional outbursts...yet through all this, Hannah bounces back up the next day to "try again", only to be met once again by her own conflicted emotional moments. Anxious about school coming to a close and spending more time at Talbot for the summer, getting used to a new resident, and working on hard issues in therapy, all have Hannah feeling a bit overwhelmed at times. But, just like marathon training...its one step at a time!!

Pain is Relative

Yesterday, I ran to the next town and back. That is a sentence I never thought I’d say, or type for that matter, in my lifetime. I chose to run my 18 miles from Florence, MT to Lolo, MT and back for strategic bathroom placement that my training group’s route was lacking. And while the well placed gas station on my route was, in fact, necessary…I did miss all the runners in the group around me to keep me going. The first nine miles to the gas station went really well. To reward myself, I stopped in the gas station and lingered there for a good 15 minute break. Mistake. The next nine miles were absolutely hellish. I thought well, this should be not so bad…after all…I’m running back home. Home. A place with wonderful cushy couches, cold clean well water that I can drink by the gallons and access to a plate full of chips and salsa and a promise of a milkshake. Home is only nine miles away I said to myself.

Then on mile…I don’t really remember, maybe 12 or 13…it started. Pain. Now…I know from my own experience, what people tell me and my grandfather that pain is truly relative. I’m sure you know this truth as well. It’s not hard to figure out that my pain in my feet and knees and hips and well…most of my muscles from the waist down is only painful to me and at the same time not so unique. Other runners feel similar and relative pains of their own. We can empathize or sympathize, I never know which one to use in this context...but the point is…we don’t feel it ourselves…we can only maybe imagine it.

I’ve known this since I was young and chose to spend my summer days in a small town in Pennsylvania with my Dad’s father and my Mom’s mother. On hot nights, I slept on my Grandmother’s screened in porch and spent the mornings with her and her friends learning how to properly cheat at cards. In the evenings, my Grandfather would come by and pick me up for dinner. Then we’d go for a drive to grab an ice cream cone and catch a baseball game on the radio. Those drives seemed to last forever…he’d quiz me on what direction we were going and the importance of the communication between the catcher and the pitcher…maybe talk about the admiration for a well hit frozen rope down the third baseline and then we would eventually make our way back to the nursing home where my Grandmother lived her final days. I didn’t know it then but those drives were long for a reason. You see…my Grandfather was in his relative pain. When we arrived at the home he would bring her the “not too thick but not too thin” chocolate milkshake with one scoop of malt that she liked best. She would greet us with a smile but also a question wondering where we “had gotten too.” She loved getting that shake, she loved seeing a familiar face but she hated that nursing home and she told him about it every night. I would slip into the hall and wait. And my Grandmother would plead with my Grandfather to take her home. Somehow…he would calm her…and manage to leave her there and still wink and smile at me in the hallway to let me know it was all okay. Then we’d drive back to his house; turn on the last innings…me curled up on what he called “the davenport” and him in his armchair…with the sounds of the game putting us both to sleep. I’d usually have to wake him and he’d take me back to my Mom's mother's house on the other side of town.

What I never thought about until yesterday on that long run is that pain is relative really means pain can be lonely. I’m pretty sure my run went terribly wrong in the end because I couldn’t commiserate…even with just a roll of the eyes to another runner to suggest, “Man, this is hard but worth it.” I was out there on my own. While this is not really a huge problem or shouldn’t be for a runner…for me right now (novice and naïve) I need those other runners around me. I know this as much as I know my Grandfather, that seemed to make everything okay at all times, was actually lonely in his pain and found my company (even as a 11 year old girl that probably acted bored and, at times, ungrateful) to be a comfort. I also know this to be true for Hannah. With no parents (birth, adoptive or foster) to claim as hers…she is in her relative and lonely pain. I know we can all try to imagine what this might feel like but I also know this pain is uniquely hers. And I also know she feels alone in it and needs the Youth Homes (and our community) to be her comfort.

So pain is relative...and lonely. And seems to wax and wane in its ability to affect you according to your readiness for it. I’m not sure I would say bracing yourself for pain makes you feel it less…actually; I think I’d say almost the opposite. Bracing yourself pretty much guarantees it will hurt more. You know it’s coming so you wince at the thought of it and roll up in a ball up and just wait. But if you experience it…face it every day and let it happen…maybe you can make your way through it…maybe you can find someone to lean on and then in the end…come out stronger for it.

Dodge Ball

Last year, at the this time, I was pregnant with my third child and weighed sixty some pounds heavier than I am today. I tend to pack on the pounds with pregnancies with some kind of mythical happenstance that defies any reason or explanation. When I’m pregnant, if I just look in the direction of a carbohydrate I swell like the blueberry gum girl in Willy Wonka’s factory. Needless to say, with each pregnancy I worried a bit about ever again seeing my ankles in an acceptable circumference in relation to the rest of my body. Even though this worry was very real…especially with this last pregnancy due to my ever increasing age and decreasing metabolism…I still avoided regular exercise. That was the case, until last January, when I found more than losing the baby weight to be a good motivator to start something new. I found motivation in a girl named Hannah at the Youth Homes.

But since I’ve leaped blindly into doing the full marathon instead of the half, I’ve started to really wonder what else is behind this decision of mine. Was it just the runner’s high influencing me to up my goal as I finished 13 miles a couple of weeks ago…just some kind of bolt of endorphins that lead me down this path? The answer is…I really don’t know. I just did it. I took a leap of faith that I can actually manage to cross the finish line of the full before they tear it down. I’m still not totally clear on my motives. I guess…life sometimes feels like a game of dodge ball and you gotta decide if you want to hang out in the back avoiding the inevitable or step to the front and take on the bigger, meaner and faster kid from Mrs. Appleyard’s class.

I know I truly want Hannah to know someone is willing to do something ridiculously hard for them to prove she is worth the effort. But I also know I’ll be proud of this insane accomplishment and grateful I can tell my kids that I did it even though I was really REALLY afraid I wouldn’t be able to finish. And…that just trying  to do something scarey is more important than pride. That believing in your own hard work, finding your limits and attempting to push past them is what carries you along a path to being a better version of yourself. I don’t think these pursuits are necessary every day but once in awhile you need to jump into something you’re not so sure about to find out what you’re made of…right? Life gives us these challenges in some kind of natural rhythm completely relative to our needs…and that just mystifies me.

Still looking for running partners for miles 13 -25. If you are up for a mile or two…let me know.

Thank you Krista, Kay, Nate, Lisa, Hannah and staff for offering to run with me on the big day.