I. The Warm Up
“Are you running this morning?”
My husband, Mike, doesn’t even make eye contact with me. He just sits parallel to me in bed while we read the morning news (cough*scroll our phones*cough) and nudges me with his voice wearing a sly grin on his face at which I refuse to look but know is there. It’s not a question or even a reminder as much as a judgement.
“Mmmmhhh,” is my response.
Are there people who bound out of bed excited for their morning runs? I’ve been a runner all my life, a very slow one but a runner all the same, and still I always put up a fight. It’s like it’s part of my pre-stretching routine. My mind says “run!” And my body says “mmmmhhh. I don’t know. It’s just so comfortable here.”
And still, he knows what he has to do. He offers me a few extra grace minutes until 6:59 AM at which time he takes his cue and shoves me out of bed because he’s rude and also he loves me. I glare at him, because I’m annoyed and also I love him.
“Ugggggh. Fiiiiiiine,” I say, because I learned this strategy from the children. It accurately expresses to the pusher that you will be doing what they are making you do but you are NOT happy about it and a long exhale of sound is the only way to properly express this.
I check the weather app, which is a silly thing in Minnesota in the winter. It’s cold. Really cold. Always is. Always will be.
13 degree Fahrenheit. Lovely. I think perhaps I should argue about the auspicious number being a sign but Mike is already downstairs and I can hear a cacophony of whining children reminding me that, on second thought, maybe a quick run will be less painful than the alternative.
I wrestle on layers of running clothes that hold a stronger suction on my body than my Dyson vacuum (obviously designed by a man). It’s their only job and still the clothes, too, seem to be protesting activity this morning.
A few more hunts later for the left shoe, the headphones, the arm band for the phone, the light up vest because it’s still dark and getting run over by a car sounds like a bad idea, and then a back and forth decision about headband or balaclava before settling on balaclava and going full bank robber on this fine morning, I open the door and step out onto my porch.
With one icy cool, deep breath in and a long, slow, foggy exhale out, I remember why I’m doing this.
I love winter running.
No, I don’t love being shoved out of a warm bed into a bitter dark street. That part is hard, as already outlined.
But I do love the cold. I love the way silence falls through bare trees and crunchy snow. I love the quiet and stillness of the running paths with fewer visitors to dodge. I love how the sun feels like a friend instead of an enemy as it does in the summer. And most importantly, I love the way my body slowly comes alive with each forward movement.
The awakening doesn’t happen all at once. It’s 13 degrees after all. It’s freaking cold. One step outside and I’m numb from the top down. But that’s the magic in the winter run. The gradual heating of the body gives me something to work toward. You don’t warm up if you don’t move.
Only a few paces in and it’s my balaclava that I lose first. Not over my head but away from my mouth. My nose might be cold but it’s a price I pay to breathe deeply, fill my lungs with oxygen, support the heavy work I know I have ahead of me.
Next to warm up are my fingers. Brought on almost by instinct in my body to find warmth quickly, I shake my hands and wiggle my fingers until they move from numb to tingly to warm and then eventually so hot I must remove my gloves all together. There’s a powerful sensation in feeling warm hands against cool air. It feels like a super power, as if my strength comes from within. I need this boost. I need the reminder I am capable, that I have everything I need to keep going.
My feet and legs are last to awaken. They stay numb for most of the first mile of my run. But as the warmth starts to spread from inside my chest, where my heart pounds out a beat, to the length of my legs all the way down to the equal pounding of feet, I am surprised to realize I have legs at all, really. I realize then, as I can feel my toes move inside my shoes, the pound of foot to ground, the muscles moving back and forth in rhythm to the rest of my body, that even when I couldn’t feel them, my feet were still carrying me along. Winter running takes trust. I don’t feel my strength all at once. But my body keeps me moving forward anyway. I suppose it’s a trust on both of our parts.
This warm up usually takes about a full mile for me. Today, I greet that mile just as I crest the hill that goes down to the lake. I see the beach, quiet, frozen in time, as if the laughter of summer's play is trapped in the ice crystals.
It’s then I think of my children. This beach is our playground all summer long. It has been every year since we moved here four years ago. As I descend down the hill and onto the running path that circles the lake, I think about all the summers I’ve spent on her shores.
I think about the first summer when there were just two children to watch, and I wondered if I wanted a third. Do I really want to do this again, I asked the lake? She only responded by inviting me out into her gentle cool waters where the children played.
I think of the next summer, when the third baby was in my arms. I sat on the blanket under the tree while the bigs played with their dad in their water, taking a deep inhale of the now familiar to me smell of the lake air. At that moment breath was all I had. I could not envision any strength. Not yet. But I knew enough to believe I needed to support the heavy work I had ahead of me. Breath was enough that day.
By the next summer that baby had grown and he was a handful. It was a lot for one person to hold all three, not physically of course but still in my gaze and care at all times. But I did it. Somehow a strength from within taught me how to balance when I doubted it myself. And I’ll admit, nothing makes you feel like a superhero quite like keeping three children alive all at once.
Year after year it got better, it got easier. Finding strength in parenting doesn’t happen all at once. It’s a slow gradual warming up of confidence and trust in my own knowledge and patience. It also takes therapy and partner support to remind me there is strength there I forgot I had. I can look back now and see, when it was really really hard, I kept showing up, I kept trying. You only improve if you keep going, and I did.
My oldest is nine now. A decade of parenting is quite a long run. But the youngest is three. There is still so much ahead for us. And yet, now that I’m warmed up, I feel a bit stronger than I did at the beginning. It’s like I’m settling into the next phase of parenting. I feel ready, whatever that means.
Back on my run, I’ve reached a point on the lake trail when I can turn left and head home or keep going for a longer run around the lake. I hesitate for a minute. Do I have enough energy today? The sun has started to peek over the trees to my left, reminding me my body is warm, like it has only just come alive.
Ok then, let’s keep going. I pass the turn off and settle into the long winding path ahead of me.
To Be Continued…Stay tuned for the next two movements of this mother running in future posts! If you want to be the first to know when new posts are published, be sure you are signed up for my Raise & Shine Letter. It’s a fun letter to write and I think a fun one to read, way more fun than a run.
This post is part of a blog hop with other runner-mother-creatives. Click here to view the next post in this series on running, mothering, and making.
