My parents came into town last week. Their plan is to stay with us through Sunday
and we are so grateful for the help. It
means we can do things like sleep through the 2 a.m. feeding while my mom takes
care of it. It means we don’t have to be
up at the crack of dawn with Daughter because my dad is an early riser.
When I realized the advantage of having extra adults around,
I immediately thought of running. In the
last several weeks, my running has been sparse.
I’ve been trying to nail down my family’s work-daycare-commuting-bedtime
routine before trying to fit running back into my life. (I can’t help but think about how ridiculous
it seems that we would have a routine.
We are soooooo far away from that.) Unless
there are extra adults in my household, running is rarely an option.
I took a few minutes on Sunday to plan a week of workouts
since we had the help this week: Leave
work a little early on Monday so I can run with the club; go to body pump Tuesday
morning while Daughter is at preschool (didn’t have to bring the baby with me);
enjoy Halloween on Wednesday with my family; run in the afternoon on Thursday;
and then catch up with the club again on Saturday morning. It seemed easy enough and completely
realistic.
And then came Monday, a whirlwind day at work. The kind of day that offers a 5 minute lunch
and 5 minutes to pump. I didn’t leave
work as early as I was hoping and raced home as best as I could in rush hour
traffic. (The drive home is almost an
hour.) I really wanted to run and I was
anxious to meet the club. My motivation
was high.
Until I walked in the door and picked up my baby boy. How could I turn around and leave him again
when I’d been gone all day? And for
something as selfish as running. I was
immediately overwhelmed with emotions.
Sad about not spending the day with him.
Conflicted about being a working mom.
But most of all, frustrated that I can’t fit all the things I want into
my life. So damn frustrated.
I went upstairs to pump, but while I was up there, I decided
that it would be ridiculous to run. My
family needs me. My baby will only be
little for a short while. Chris got home
and I talked it through with him. I told
him I can’t win, but I should err on the side of my family. I will be upset no matter what I choose. I imagined the tears streaking down my face while
I was out running because I wasn’t home with my family. At the same time I imagined being crabby and
miserable because I missed a run yet again.
In the end, I decided to run, since I had planned on
it. As much as I didn’t want to, I was
going to follow through with my plan. In
that moment, I hated myself for it. It’s
the age old dilemma of parents. Where do
you draw the line between doing what’s best for yourself vs. doing what’s best
for your kids? If you have an answer, I’d
love to hear it.
So off to running club I went. I got there a few minutes late and ended up
following some of my old pace group, a group I haven’t run with in ages because
I’m a lot slower than them these days.
What’s not-so-fun about running club this time of year is that it’s
dark. I very soon realized that if I
couldn’t keep up with them, I’d be running alone in the dark. So I hauled ass. I ran with Bruce for a while and listened to
him talking with another runner. I,
however, was unable to speak. I was
sucking wind the whole time. My entire
warm-up was a crazy fast pick-up. But I
did it. I stuck with the group. When we got to the Tyrol hill loops, I took
off ahead of the group while they were getting situated. I figured they would be passing me very
shortly, so my plan was to prolong that.
What ended up happening was unexpected.
I ended up running alone in the dark AHEAD of my group. I can’t explain why they didn’t catch me. I suspect they were all running extra slow
for my benefit, but they denied this. I
ended up running all three loops alone and I loved it. I was running. I wasn’t getting passed. I felt great.
Euphoric, even. I can easily say
it was my best run of the year because the improvement was tangible. I’m
running faster than I did a couple weeks ago.
It was awesome.
I was still flying high on endorphins when I got home. When I walked through the door, though, I
fell all the way down from that high. It
was 7:30 and Baby was already in bed for the night. In the entire day, I spent less than an hour
with him. My heart broke
immediately. How could I be so
selfish? How is this ever going to work?
I still don’t know how to make it work. I’ll get my workouts in when I can here or
there, but there will be no routine to speak of for a long while. Not while sleep is so unpredictable for all
of us. I never even got to tell Chris
about my awesome run or how I kept up with my old pace group. When he reads it here, it’ll be the first
time he hears about it. Life is still
pretty hectic for us. We’re doing okay,
but a lot of the time, I feel like we’re just barely getting by.
And the one take-away thought I’m keeping with me from
Monday’s experience: Working moms can’t
have it all. We just can’t. Something has to give at all times, whether
it’s the quality of our work or the quality of time spent with our family. And that doesn’t even include time for
ourselves. Time for running. Time for having a date with our husbands. Or even time to tell partners about our days.
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