The First Mile, the Last Mile

When I run, I always say the first mile is the hardest for me.  It takes me a while to get into a grove and for my body to realize that yeah, I'm really going to make it run today and I'm going to make it run as far as I say it is going to.  Once you get up to long distances, which I haven't reached as much running as on my bike, but your body starts to feel like no matter how much you push mentally that it really just isn't going to do what you want it to.

We ran a 5K on Saturday and it reminded me (having not run for a while) about that first mile.  How hard it is to start new things.  Today at ballet with my girls thinking about all of the things that have to happen between now and the middle of June, plus the birthday craziness of our summers, and the added bonus of some major life events for my husband and my oldest daughter.  I remembered about that last mile of a long race, the one that you think you can't possibly do, but somehow you manage to do it, and how good it feels when it's all done.

Our family has been a overwhelmed and stressed out.  Lots of things piling up here and there, I mean that quite literally in some respects.  We have little piles of things lying around that we just haven't had enough time to spread around and get them taken care of.  At times the stress feels very similar to training for a long run or bike ride.  When you are in training you stress your body in little spurts, essentially, slowly building up endurance, strength and lung capacity.  You take time off to let your body repair, which is an important part of getting stronger.  All of us have been working hard, but neglecting to rest.  Last week Jamie and I talked about what our family needs and most of it is simplifying and supporting each other.  We worked out a new chore schedule, putting a few more responsibilities on the kids and working time into our schedule for recovery.

Luckily, things like ballet will have a hiatus for the summer.  As will school.  We should just drop completely out of the system for a week, ignore the phone calls and the emails and just enjoy each other and having nothing in particular to do.  That's what you do after the big race, take a week off, sleep let your body catch up and let it repair.  Don't be surprised if you call or email me the week after Bailey and Abby get done with school and I don't answer, we're resting from our "marathon".