Training Exercises

Yesterday I got up in the morning and put on my running clothes. First I had to bring the kids to school and make a mandatory trip to town to the store but then I would squeeze in a run before the youngest boy got done with preschool. It was all perfectly timed. Except for one thing. I forgot about the preschool's field trip to the post office that I'd promised to be a driver for.

But I still had hope. Jim was supposed to be coming home early from work. He could stay with the kids while I went for a run. The eldest son had a 1/2 day of school, I picked him up and learned that he had a playdate planned. So we went over to his friends house. I stayed, determined, in my running clothes. Got home at 4:30, Jim still not home. Turned out his work day was longer than he thought. Finally, 5:00 rolls around and he gets home. The sky is beginning to darken. I don't like to run in the dark, especially in winter. I say it's too late, I'm too tired to run, but I feel like shit and I need it, I need so much to get outside by myself and breath the cold fresh air and move my body, so I go.

I'm writing about this here because I got rid of my running blog and Andi requested an update and eventually it has something to do with writing. I've been depressed and annoyed with everyone and everything. I'm tired of winter and everything feels so gray and cruddy. I have dark circles and bags under my eyes. I am so tired. But as I ran through the woods at dusk, I began feeling better. Even as I imagined mountain lions watching me as they hunted for their evening meal, I felt better. I felt alive again. I imagined, as I often do, one of the stories that I am working on that is inspired by this small patch of woods where I often run. I started formulating ideas.

I tripped over a log. I gasped. A soft "whump" as my body hit the soft snow. Nothing injured. But suddenly I found myself so tired, the ground so soft and comfortable, I just lay there, not wanting to get up, wanting to actually just sleep right there. But I got up. When I got home I realized that I had done my short loop really fast.

Now I've cleared some of the crud out of my brain and feel like I can write again. I have been frustrated with my writing, and was really hoping that by participating in this little writing group of ours, I would work on some new stuff and have some fresh ideas. For me, the purpose of having our little "writing assignments" is just to do some writing other than whatever big project it is I'm working on, to just do some writing because we are accountable to each other. So I was disappointed with the way that the last one went, for a few reasons. First of all, I think two weeks is too long. Kelly sat down and did her "assignment" in one sitting. She just cranked it out. We can all do that. Why should it take us 2 weeks? Then there's the thing with Andi not finishing hers because she was still editing. Come on! Fuck the editing. That's not what this is about. Edit it later. Just get it done. So then we didn't end up being able to talk about our writing at all during the last chat.

I see these assignments as exercises. Like training for the big race. Each training run doesn't have to be great. Sometimes you can run a measly freakin two miles, fall down in the snow and want to go to sleep. But the important part is to do the exercise on a regular basis, to work up to the big run, the race, whatever your goal is. These writing exercises are like training runs. We just have to put in the miles. You don't stop in the middle of a run, go back and re-run the last mile because you feel like you could have done better. You just keep going.

Lori