"Tell me ,again, why you're running?"

I was recently complaining to an acquaintance but training for this half marathon. Not someone who knows me very well, but someone who was willing to listen to how much fun training is not. All she said when I was done was,"So tell me why you are running?" The simple answer is because I can. If we wanted to break it down and analyze it further and perhaps make it more interesting I could confess of the deep need for my children to see me in action. To see all of my limbs moving. To witness strength and capability on a physical level emanating from their mother. Something I never got see in my own mom. There is a power to moving your body beyond limitation. Beyond what you thought it was capable of. I want my children to always know I tried and to know that they must also try. Of course right now my children are too young to grasp anything beyond, " Mom likes to run with her friends." Which is s good start.

Each mile I run sparks something new inside me. Another goal becomes within my reach. It is something like that song,"This Little Light of Mine." Sometimes all we need is one shaft of light that blows away the darkness, gives us just enough of an outline to show us that the coat hanger isn't a monster and we have nothing to fear. One of my friends recently ran five miles and was telling me how great she felt afterward. I smiled and responded,"It's empowering, isn't it?" Her own smile tilted and grew and she said," Yes, it really is!" And that is just what it is, empowering. It never felt that way in my twenties and certainly not in my "Kermit" teens. Running was just something to do. Now it feels symbolic, large. I may never run another half-marathon and I can almost guarantee I won't run a marathon, training sucks the fun out of running. But it has made me realize that the only thing that stops us from dog anything, trying anything is ourselves.

When I wake up in the morning and feel tired and tell myself it is going to be bad day or a long day it is like Samantha Stevens has wiggled her nose and made it so. My oldest will miss his us, my husband will forget something important and will need me to bring it to his office, my toddler will only my attention and my four year old will want to finger paint..on my walls. I will discover I have nothing for dinner and no clean underwear. It's enough to make you want to go back to bed and stay there until you can start over with a new sunrise. I was explaining this to some of my mommy friends like this," If I have to take all three kids to Target I just tell myself it is going to be fine and they will behave." It works much better than telling myself how awful it will be because she enough that is what happens. I told them to try it. They all smiled but their eyes said, "You're crazy."

I met another woman a few days ago who is running the same half marathon. She is already up to 11 miles. When I told her I was at 9 miles her eyes sort of bulged and for moment I thought she had some food stuck in her throat. Then I realized she was just shocked that I was so far behind. I started to panic. Perhaps she is right. My training has been anything but regular. I have tried but with three kids, working every weekend and my husband also training it is almost impossible to stick to any kind of strict routine. Not to mention I don't really care for routines. She is at 11 miles. I'm at 9 and my thighs hurt, my knees hurt even my gluteus maximus feels maxed out. How will I make it to the finish line? It was at that moment that I realized I was sinking myself before I even got to the starting line. I was talking myself out of something that I can do. I m running because I can. I am running because it empowers me. I am running because my gluteus maximus has never looked better.

I may take a long time to reach the finish line but waiting there for me will be three little people who won't know how long it took or what it means to me. They will have a memory of a moment when their mom was strong and healthy and ran breathless to them, while they all pointed to the bounce house and Dunkin Donut booth begging for Munckins.

So we can take the pyschologist approach to my running and break it down and beat it like an old rug, spreading dust in a thousand directions and forgetting where it all came from or we can keep it simple and say," I am running because I can."

Let the Paining Begin...I mean Training...

My legs hurt. My thighs burn and my calves are aching. My lower abdomen is crying out for mercy, probably because there aren't any muscles left to support that area. And I am wondering why I let my husband talk me into this in the first place? Was it a moment of pure insanity? Did he look particularly handsome on that day and I thought "Aw, you're cute...sure I can run 13 miles with you." I am not sure. There are many decisions I have made over the past 40 years that seemed like a good idea at the time. Blunt cut bob, four layers of shirts, Jordache jeans and that guy in South Carolina. This decision, however could prove to be a physical detriment. Hopefully not but don't think I won't be calling on my physical therapist friend for advice and my girlfriends for sympathy at some point.

I'm going to go back and explain again about the hills that surround my life. As I increase my mileage I also have to add more hills to go up. And it is truly amazing that I have more hills to run up but I never seem to be running downhill anywhere. I am considering petitioning to have the town name officially changed to "Hillsville" or "Up,up and away". I am not sure how this will go over with the locals. I am guessing not well. Sympathy surely won't be with a mother of three who only moved into town five years ago. You have to have been born here to attempt any change and then of course if you were born here you don't want anything to change anyway. So I am stuck with the name and stuck with the hills. One of my friends from my previous urban life commented on her first trip to my house, "I was beginning to feel like I was in the "Sound of Music"." And she broke into the song "The Hills are Alive..." At the time I laughed. Last week I informed her she isn't so funny any more. My husband who normally runs at the gym in a controlled climate on one of those gerbil cage treadmills ran a seven mile loop around the neighborhood the other night and all he could spit out when he got back was "Damn hills".

Training would go so much better, I am convinced if I could run on a flat surface. If I wasn't constantly pumping my arms and pushing my leg muscles to carry me just a little bit higher. But there is no getting around it. Believe me I have tried. The closest I can get is to drive myself somewhere and then run which seems to completely defeat the purpose. I cannot run on a treadmill, it gives me motion sickness. I cannot run on a track because I lose count of how many times I have run around and seven plus miles on a track might just make me dizzy. At this point I have to concentrate on the music playing in my ears and use Jedi mind tricks to convince myself that the landscape is just tilting and that I am staying straight on course and the horizon is not over the hill but staring me right in the eyes. Now if I could only use that same trick to convince my lower abdomen that have enough muscle to hold everything in place this race should be a piece of cake.