Goals goals goals

So this is the hosed off version of me after the August Spartan race. It is hard to explain how the whole process of preparing and running the race changed how I view myself.

Here is what I appreciate about Spartan races:

1. They are a little quirky and different than a typical sporting event. This appeals.

2. They are hard. Really hard.

3. You don't know what to expect.

4. You get to play in the mud like you are a kid.

 

I am not an athlete but I have set a goal for myself for the upcoming year. I want to get a double trifecta. To get a trifecta metal you have to run all three distances of race within a year. I want to do it twice. I have started training for my first race. 3 times a week I go to Smackdown - boot camp style class, once a week I train with Dan (who seems like a nice guy but is really not) who kicks my butt really hard, three times a week I run. I also zumba on occassion and spin when I can too. This past month has been hard. December is an exhausting time for teachers and plus I caught a nasty stomach flu. Just when I got my mojo back I started throwing up. Sigh. Onwards and upwards.

 

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. We have plans to go out but my goal is to run 5 km on the treadmill at the gym before that and see if my stomach can handle it. Christmas Day will be busy and Boxing Day will still be too cold to run outside so I will do another 5 km on the treadmill downstairs and do some zumba at home too. On Wednesday I will do my 9 km and see if anyone wants to head to the gym to do a smackdown. Wednesday marks the beginning of the kitchen purge as well and getting serious with clean eating again.

 

To be honest, doing the Super Spartan in Las Vegas is scaring the pants off me right now. I don't know if I can do it. It is 13 km. I am not athletic. I will try anyway. The worse thing that can happen is that I will have to walk and do a lot of burpees. I am wondering how I will balance work, family, training and life in general. Dave will be having surgery mid January and I will be steering the home ship alone for a month until he can walk again.

 

This is a picture of Sherry and I before the August race. we had a good time. I guess that is really why I want to do this again. Because it was fun.

 

December 27
Today my goal is to run 9 km on the treadmill since I was too sick to do it before Christmas. I am now playing catch up. The windchill is still -30 so even with my new Craft running pants I think I will pass on outdoor running. By the weekend I should be able to go outside.
I am in the process of cleaning up my eating and doing a kitchen purge. Anything unclean hits the garbage today and the fridge gets filled with actual food. A big pot of veggie chili is in the plan plus roasting a turkey breast and dividing it up are in the plans today. My plan is to mix the turkey into the veggie chili in proper protein portions. Raw veggies don't agree with me when it is cold out.  The Christmas stuff is coming down and everything is getting a proper cleaning. Mental cleaning is underway too which kind of sucks and is hard but part of the general house cleaning process. My friend Marshall deserves large gifts for listening to my grumbling and despair over the last couple of months. I am looking forward to the next couple of weeks of getting everything back on track and getting back the spartan spirit - aroooo!

Okay, now I am back from the gym. I stopped after a sad 25 minutes running on the treadmill. Aside from having a bad case of winter depression, the flu apparently hasn't let go yet. That was an unsuccessful 9 km. I will try outside tomorrow when it is a bit warmer. I am looking forward to my doctor's appointment next week to see if I can get a prescription for a SAD lamp. I am searching for the answer right now that doesn't involve drugs. How nice it would be to be one of those permanantly cheerful, balanced women who breeze through life without thinking about things. I also am not going to look at any spartan websites because everything I want to do seems completely unattainable and I get too caught up in what I am not instead of enjoying the feeling of being.

Journey To Spartan - Regular People Doing Really Cool Stuff

Journey To Spartan . . . regular people doing really cool stuff

I am not an athlete. I have always been that kid picked last for teams, laughed at for being slow and uncoordinated. Thankfully my gym teachers never made us play dodgeball. If they did I would have been the one flat on the floor being nailed in the head. I am not anyone special. I have 3 kids. I am 40. I am an elementary school teacher. Just your basic everyday sort of person.

My friend Michelle and I had been talking to one another for awhile about our lack of motivation at the gym and our general frustration with life. We ended up talking each other into doing a program at the gym run by Scott McDermott, Ironman triathlete, ultraman racer and all round pretty great guy called Smackdown.  For 3 times a week we comitted to having our butts kicked and handed to us on a plate. I will always remember our first class where Scott explained the format - you will do 5 hours of cardio a week on your own. Before class you will warm up for 15 minutes and then we will kick the shit out of you for half an hour. And I mean that in the kindest most loving way possible, and then you will stretch on your own. Sounds fun, right? And we were off . . . with our trainers Madison and  Dan.

The first week I literally thought I would die. Suicides? Makes Me Pukes? Who does things like this? Apparently us. And hard. Within a couple of weeks we adjusted to the new pace and started to get stronger. How cool is that? Even better, we somehow became a team.

As we continued for a month or two I was starting to feel faster and stronger. At work I could haul my giant rubbermaid of books and papers up and down those stairs like nothing. I started to get actual shoulders (well kind of). I could lift a 50 pound sandbag over my head and smash it to the ground. Me!

We developed a strong support group and never let each other quit. During one of Scott's weekly emails he described an event he had signed up for called a Spartan Race. It sounded interesting. The video of Spartan looked was wild and challenging. Someone I wanted to be like would go in a race like that. Walls, mud, fire, gladiators, and the dreaded running? I don't know how other think, but when you feel that spark of something that lights you up, instead of listening to the sit down and shut up voices, it is pretty great to hold on the the idea voice and see what happens. So now we have a gorup of about 14 signed up to do this thing.

So here is the awesome thing about Scott. We said we want to do the Spatan Race and what should we do? He said let's make this happen.  Our trainers did their thing and came up with a new program instead of smackdown which was evil as it was. and called it Spartan Training.

One thing that I have learned when you see where you want to go, find people who are commited to going the same way and join with them.

The first week we had to go on the rock wall and climb to a point. I was 2 feet off the ground clinging on thinking I am up so high I am going to fall and die!

We did a workout this week that invloved suicides (remember running lines in high school) where we had to drop to the floor and get up 5 times at each stop. Sometimes it is easier to laugh than cry and I laughed through that one.

 
Running was going better than it had before but I was having a lot of pain.

Sue and I sat on the back steps after class and cried. It was so hard. I was hungry, tired, stressed and wondering if I could do this. I was scared that I had gotten myself in over my head. On Friday, Scott helped Sue and I with running some more and we left feeling more confident and determined. I went for a run on Saturday - pain free after the extra help!

This week we flipped 200 pound tires for fun, climbed the rock wall, did miltary crawls, suicides, running, running, more running, stairs, hurdles, skipping, burpees, mountain climbers, the warrior rope, push ups, climbed over 8 foot walls.  I climbed right to the top of that cargo net and it was really high! I was so proud of myself for conquering that fear! And with Sue not letting me fail, I climbed over that 8 foot wall. This morning Sue, Michelle, and I went to Jarvis Bay for a trail run. Michelle is telling me that we are doing a triathlon next year. HA! I have been going for extra runs since Scott has been so generous with his time and skill in helping me with my running form. Now I love running! It doesn't hurt and being in the trails is such a rush! I am getting stronger every day and I love it. Sometimes I am working out for up to 3 hours a day with fitting in extra runs, classes plus spartan training. 

It is emotionally draining at times. I am having a lot of ups and downs but I am getting to the point where I can tell that I need a day to lie at the beach or read a book. I am bruised literally from my shoulders to my ankles and have blisters on the bottoms of my feet from working on my running form. Life is good and I am headed to the book store and then to the beach to enjoy our one day of sunshine even though I look like I have been in a car accident.

July 23
This week my hubby is away so I have a babysitter booked for every day this week so I can fit in what I need. Even so I am not running as much as I would like to. Michelle and I are going to do a trail run in Canmore in September and I need to keep moving forward.

We have commited to doing this thing as a team! I would never be able to do this without the support of the girls! They are amazing and they inspire me every day.Find someone who is going the same way you are and join together. Diversity makes us strong and we lift each other up.

Aug 4 

Last Saturday we did an outdoor spartan workout. It was really tough but the time flew by. Rolling tires up hills, the wall, 50 pound sandbell slam burpees plus a load of running. The past week has been really tough. The eating has been strict and I have been working out anywhere between 2 and 5 hours a day. This morning I tripped over a root on a trail run and was stung by a bee. Sigh. Keep on swimming. Two more weeks until the race and I am really tired. I couldn't do this without our team, thats for sure. This next week coming up is supposed to be a really tough one. I am worrying how I am going to get my work commitments going at a good pace, give my family the attention they deserve, and step up the workouts too. It isn't always the physical aspect of things for me that is hard, it is the emotional. I have never been in any race before and I really don't want to look like a fool.

Scott has been so amazing with this whole thing. He adapted to what was going on so fast we didn't have any choice but to be successful. Here is a guy who doesn't look down on anyone. He only wants to help people be healthy, be strong and fit. We said we wanted to do Spartan, he said lets make it happen. Just like that. He doesn't baby you. He tells you what you need to do to be successful. He tells you you can do it. He troubleshoots. He fixes but he will never tell you it is okay to quit. The last time I attempted to run I ended up in physiotherapy. I was aprehensive about doing that again. Scott spent time coaching running form and then again with Sue and I for an analysis. I am running with no pain. I am not fast (yet) but I feel so free to be able to finally do this successfully!

Dan is our group's trainer. I takes courage for a 22 year old guy to holler at a group of women who talk back. Dan is with us day after day on top of his own spartan training which makes ours look like fun and games. Seriously, this guy is crazy and strong. He tend to be trigger happy witht the timer though and makes us go longer than he says. Wait until he sees what he is going to wear for the race!

Madison 
Madison was a smackdown trainer for us and trains another spartan group. She looks cute and sweet but she smiles innocently when she says tabata. It is a ruse.

Failing is not an option!

Am I an athlete yet?

Cycles of change 2026 version

This life journey is wild. It has been many years since I last wrote anything personal outside of my journal. I look back on my last blogs and see my kids when they were young, and the emotion of my discovery of Spartan racing and running, which really was self discovery. I believe that self discovery led to the end of some things, it also led to new chapters. Today I am in the "before" part of the discovery cycle.

Looking back at how cycles have gone before I recognize the void before invention and the pieces of light that start to sparkle when new understandings grow. When I look back on one of my earlier cycles, I feel gratitude for the experience. What I recognize is that although I was the one doing the hard work, it was not done without others, both mentally and physically. 

I wanted to finish a Masters of Education degree back then too. When I tried, the timing was not right and I couldn't finish what I started at that time. But. I went back. It wasn't how I planned it, it was years later than I first tried, but I wouldn't do anything differently. It was a transformational learning experience. It pushed my mental and emotional limits, it ripped apart my thinking and rebuilt it over and over again. Like my friend Erin Reilly has said, you don't come out of that degree the same as you go in. It changes you in a way that is hard to describe. That was in the middle of another cycle of growth and change.

So here I am now, still in the middle of body fluctuations, post Covid, a lot heavier, and in a lot of turmoil emotionally and physically. I know all these things are inter-related. I could set a goal, weight, meal planning, calories, macros. It isn't like I don't know how or haven't done it and done it well. It isn't my answer right now. Maybe it is less about isolating the parts of myself and more about bringing them back together again. One thing I have learned over the years is that all the parts of self are interrated and impossible to separate into categories. Being human is being spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and physical all at the same time. My intellectual part is bored. My physical part is out of shape. My emotional part is like a void, and my spiritual part is passive.  I should add that I haven't slept since June. I am tending to have a hard time getting to sleep and wake up with a feeling of dread at 2 or 3. Clearly, I am burying something that is waiting to come out.  I need to be patient with the process. I will understand when I am ready and that's okay.

My house is empty more often than not. Emily has moved out, Alex and Violet both work and are exploring their freedom, all on schedule and on paper seemed totally reasonable.  All I have left seems to be the last dregs of motherhood like the coffee grounds floating around when the Keurig pod has burst and not been cleaned up by an unknown person. It's not really lonely, not really empty. It just exists, and in the belly of this house breathing in and out, is me. It is an ending. I will be selling this house next year in all likelihood, and there is a mass of childhood and family memories to go through and get rid of. Where I will go, I don't know. It is hard to trust that the right thing will happen. A new job? New location? On my own? Not on my own? What I do know is that I need to figure out who I am when mother is not my main role, who I am when I love what I do again, what do I love, and who will stay and who will go when I don't fit their narrative anymore or comply with what they want? For me, that is the hardest part of allowing change. Fear of the unknown and instability. It is a great reorganization of self. It takes time, it is messy, and deeply personal. 

What I do know is that my spark is gone. Goals do not work at this point. But. I have been here before. That is how I know movement will happen. It always does. I believe when I find my answers, my pieces will realign. For now, I don't see anything ahead of me. There is a lot of work ahead.

Transitions and New Chapters

The transition between 3 and 4 has always seemed like the end of babyhood and the beginning of childhood to me. Tonight my youngest child is having her last evening as a 3 year old and I have found myself thinking about how things are changing. After being deeply immersed in all things mothering for the past 9 years my role is transitioning. I have found myself wondering what my purpose is in our family. Am I really needed here? Do I benefit my family in any way? What do I do if I am not deep in the trenches of diapers, various bodily fluids, and my small people have beautifully blossomed before my very eyes? I have been a dedicated attachment parent but now as I have found joy in my work again, what does that mean? Do I still classify as an attached parent if I love my work? 

 When my oldest was born I had a serious go round with depression. I had left a job which I was highly committed to and at the same time found a whole new side of myself when I fell in love with this little girl. I discovered my intuition and also a lot of anger at the medical profession for my newly torn up and scarred body and at well meaning people who seemed to think that they knew what was best for my baby. My daughter is practical and smart and I am proud of the woman she will become.

I was determined that my next experience would be different and it was. My second birth was with one of the most experienced midwives in our province. I felt healed inside through that peaceful and pain free water birth. On top of it I was gifted with a boy who loved to be held close. Now I have a boy who is sensitive, empathetic and kind hearted, but again with the depression . . .

This is the one who will be 4 tomorrow. I was looking at the c section scar from her emergency birth and thinking about my little early baby. I am grateful for the doctor who treated me with respect but gave me honest facts.  I am grateful for my breastfeeding advocate friend who came to support my efforts on her own time and for my dear friend who let me cry on her shoulder and helped me through a few rotten situations. The depression was there again too. I also am thankful for my homeopath who literally changed my life. She doesn't know it but she appears occasionally in my dreams representing feminine wisdom. She taught me and continues to teach me to trust myself and to follow my intuition. She taught me how to understand my dreams. She introduced me to "the work" and to journaling. Sometimes I wonder if she saw the direction of how things would go for me before I did.

I have a lot to be thankful for but as my children are growing out of the physical care stage of their lives I wonder what next. I know what I want to do but I worry about how it will affect my family. Nine years ago I gave up on my goals but it seems that now I may have the opportunity to get there after all, just a little later than originally planned. Now that I have returned to work part time, I realize that I want to aim for a full time contract and finally get my Masters of Education in Reading. There, I said it. Out loud.

Religion vs Spirituality

A topic that has been on my mind quite a bit lately is the difference between religion and spirituality.  I often am reluctant to speak about these things because I don't want to offend anyone.  My personal background is that I was raised without religion, joined a church in my late 20's and left in my late 30's. I think that for many people religion and spirituality can go hand in hand. If an organization helps you develop the spiritual side of your being then I am thrilled for you. If on the other hand, going to church hinders your spirituality and sense of self maybe you should reconsider. Do you allow yourself to be defined by what others tell you to be like or do you stand proud knowing that you are a beautiful expression of creation and diversity, perfect exactly how you are in this very moment?

To me spirituality is developing an awareness and living in alignment with God, Spirit, Souce, Creation, The Universe or whatever term you use to describe a greater force. It is alligning your inner purpose with your outer purpose.  And of course, if you don't believe in a higher consciousness that is fine too. There is no formula. There is you. And me. And him. And her. And them. And I really like to think we can make this whole thing work out. I love the idea of conscious evolution.

To be honest, I am not sure what is out there. I know what I feel and experience and what I have seen in the past but I am pretty sure I will never let anyone tell me what to believe again, no matter who they profess to be.

Here are some questions:
Is world peace possible with religion?
Each religion or church thinks it is "The One True Church". With so many people determined to make others believe what they believe, to prove that they are right, is in my opinion disrespectful and self centred. A peaceful earth requires compassion, understanding and acceptance. I think it is nearly impossible, although there is a remarkable group called Women of Spirit and Faith: www.womenofspiritandfaith.org which works towards feminine spiritual leadership and healing through compassion.
Is there such thing as "The One True Church"?
My feeling is the true church is the one that brings you closer to god/spirit/the universe. Given the huge differences in humanity, there is no one religion that would be right for everyone. For example, religions that preach to have many children or speak out against birth control - is this a good and fair instruction in countries where AIDS is rampant, rape is common, health care is poor, and starvation is a fact of life? Would that truly be the way of god? Many world religions place the man above the woman or demand obedience to the husband. This does not speak of equality to me. Men and women have many gifts to offer the world.
Does God/Spirit/Universe have a manual and rules?
As I was downloading irresponsibly from itunes, I was reflecting on Ricky Martin, an amazing humanitarian who has rescued many little girls in impoverished areas from a life of sexual slavery but according to most religions would be cast out for being homosexual. He is only one example of many doing incredible work to uplift and help heal the world who do not conform to religious convention.
Members of any organized religion what do you do when what you feel is right is not what your church authorities feel is right?
Do you ignore your own feelings and inner knowledge and give up your power to someone who doesn't know you? Do you conform to someone else expectations? Do you push those feelings aside and dismiss them as hormone imbalance, bad mood or something else?
Is the ultimate goal of religion following the tenets of that religion in hopes of being rewarded or is the goal to learn about your spiritual self and develop an understanding of where you need to go in your life and to understand how your particular gifts can help humanity?
Is it possible to live in complete allignment with god ad belong to a church?
For me, no. For others, maybe.


Please discuss politely:
P.S. - We will understand why these rules don't make sense when we die is a cop out. What do you really think?

Remembering Aric

Very rarely someone incredible comes into your life and somehow becomes a part of you. Many years ago I met a man who became a friend and brother. Next month will mark 7 years since we said goodbye to him. He passed away suddenly at the age of 32. Aric was and still is one of the most important people in my life. We named our son after him. We hope that he will become his unique self but also hope he will develop some of the qualities that Aric embodied.

Aric would phone for Dave and would end up talking to me for an hour before I passed the phone over. At over 6 1/2 feet tall I caught a glimpse of him hugging me in a mirrored window as he and Dave dropped me off for a conference. It still makes me smile. I always felt like a little kid when he did that and since he was well over a foot taller than me I looked like it too.

One of the qualities that I admired most in Aric was integrity, and this is where he has had the strongest affect on my life. Aric lived according to his own conscience. Recently, I have had a personal conflict in my life and I would have given just about anything for one last visit with Aric. He would never tell someone what to do. I made the choice to live in integrity even though some of the people closest to me strongly disagree with what I have done.

I love how he saw past all pretence and tradition and just lived an authentic and practical life. I love how he chose to love a woman with character and substance. I love how he was truthful in all things. He did things because he believed in them and because it fit with his values. He believed in justice and equality for all and was intelligent and well read. He was genuine, true and saw things for what they were. He is a person I aspire to be like.
Here are some words from his journal that say more or less what he stood for:

RUMINATIONS, 1997:
Get over it
The past is gone -
Choose your baggage carefully!
Don't be trapped by

- Convention
- Tradition
- Dependence
- Dogma

I wish I could talk to him just one more time. And maybe take him for a drive.