{"id":585,"date":"2014-01-20T02:09:30","date_gmt":"2014-01-20T02:09:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/?p=585"},"modified":"2014-01-20T02:09:30","modified_gmt":"2014-01-20T02:09:30","slug":"legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/?p=585","title":{"rendered":"Legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

My dad and I always used to say, after a tough run, \u201cIt hurts good.\u201d\u00a0 Now that I made it through my first real week of training in 2014, I can assure you that by the end of the week I hurt good.\u00a0 This week I invited several old friends back into my routine.\u00a0 My boxing gloves, my goggles and my yoga mat, just to name a few. If variety is the spice of life, then I was cooking with the big dogs this week.\u00a0 By Thursday night I had been to the Boxing Gym and the pool, I had run on roads and trails and I had made use of my time at home with the kids on the bike trainer and doing a yoga DVD.\u00a0 Oh, and even though I haven\u2019t used them this week, I stopped to pick up my hockey skates that I had sharpened.<\/p>\n

By Friday, my body was screaming at me, wondering what in the world I thought I was doing re-introducing all of these activities at the same time.\u00a0 While I know that the pain is a good thing because it means I\u2019m stretching, growing, making progress, I also know when I need a break.\u00a0 So I decided to take a Friday off.<\/p>\n

But yesterday I was back at it.\u00a0 I coached with the Fleet Feet trail group.\u00a0 I led the long run group of Reindeers through the Al Foster trail, into Castlewood and back.\u00a0 As we all know, I love to tell stories, so it won\u2019t surprise anyone to learn that I earned myself the title of the \u201cGhost story telling Sherpa\u201d today.\u00a0 But 10 miles leaves a lot of time for stories, so I didn\u2019t stop with the ghost stories. I told many other stories too.\u00a0 Appropriately, since I was running with the Reindeer group, I told the story of a conversation I had with Silas about a year ago, just before Christmas.\u00a0 It went like this\u2026<\/p>\n

Silas: Mom, you are a reindeer.<\/p>\n

RRG: I am?!\u00a0 Which one am I? Am I Dasher?\u00a0 Or Vixen?\u00a0 Or\u2026<\/p>\n

Silas:\u00a0 No.\u00a0 You are Gassy.\u00a0 Gassy the reindeer.<\/p>\n

RRG: Wow, that\u2019s an unfortunate name.\u00a0 Are you sure I can\u2019t be one of the others?<\/p>\n

Silas: No.\u00a0 I like Gassy.\u00a0 You are Gassy the Reindeer.<\/p>\n

And so a nickname was born.\u00a0 Warning: Gross Runner Girl Disclaimer once again. \u00a0Anyone who has ever run with me will tell you that I spit and blow snot rockets.\u00a0 A lot.\u00a0 Just ask Nick and Steve about Thursday night on the levee how they kept dodging my snot flying in the wind.\u00a0 Sorry, Guys.\u00a0 People who have run with me will also tell you that I have healthy GI track. \u00a0Therefore, I should probably embrace my Silas given nickname.<\/p>\n

Anyway\u2026<\/p>\n

At little after 7:30 am we started our run with a group of about 6 of us on a brisk morning with a sky of bright pink that quickly faded to a dim gray.\u00a0 A few miles in we sent a pair on a loop back to the parking lot since they were doing the short course.\u00a0 4 of us continued on.\u00a0 Eventually another pair dropped back a little bit.\u00a0 So it became just two of us plodding along, sharing our stories, our legacies.\u00a0 Chera\u2019s story was pretty amazing.\u00a0 She had been a single mom for a while too.\u00a0 I asked what made her take up running.\u00a0 This is something that always fascinates me because as someone who has been a runner since the ripe old age of 9, I find it hard to comprehend how difficult it would be to start at this point of my life.\u00a0 Everyone has a story, everyone has a different reason for doing what we do, everyone has a specific favorite area of expertise, but we are all endurance athletes.\u00a0 We all run or tri or what have you in an effort to prove (more to ourselves than anyone else) that we are conquerors.\u00a0 On Friday at work there were 4 of us in the store, Will, Rosie and I were all talking to a customer who is preparing for a 100 mile race.\u00a0 Rosie has completed a 100 mile race.\u00a0 Will has completed an Ironman.\u00a0 As this customer said, \u201cHats off to you\u201d about training for my Ironman, I said, \u201cThat\u2019s only going to take me about 14 hours, you\u2019ll be running several hours longer than that.\u201d\u00a0 Why do we choose to do the things we do? \u00a0We want to believe that we are capable of great things and we push ourselves to the extreme in order to find out what our limits are. We want to have a good story.<\/p>\n

So, as Chera and I led the way along the slightly snow covered, very frozen, gravel path, I told her a story about pacing my friend Jess on a tough half marathon course through Clayton a couple years ago.\u00a0 Jess wanted a sub 2 hour half marathon, I agreed to run with her to get her to get the goal time she was seeking.\u00a0 There is a lot of pressure when you pace someone and this was a first (and only so far) time for me.\u00a0 If you fail to hit the goal, you aren\u2019t just letting yourself down, you\u2019re letting someone else down too.\u00a0 I told Jess stories during that race.\u00a0 I sang songs to her. \u00a0I ran ahead and checked out the course.\u00a0 And when I turned around to find her walking up a small mountain of an incline, I yelled at her to get her ass moving up that hill.\u00a0 I don\u2019t remember what our exact finish time was when we crossed the line, but I know that we made our goal.\u00a0 I think we were right under 1:59.\u00a0 And that remains one of my favorite racing memories ever.\u00a0 Getting Jess her goal was even better than getting one of my own.\u00a0 As I told Chera today, when you pace someone like that you take someone under your wing and you own it, it\u2019s like\u2026 \u201cyour baby\u201d.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I forget to look in the window of my own house and see that I am raising 3 little stories of my own.\u00a0 Yesterday I didn\u2019t forget.\u00a0 Yesterday, after running with the Chera and the other reindeer, I went over to the school to watch my boys play basketball.\u00a0 As I watched Silas, who appears to be somewhat afraid of the ball, I smiled at the little dance he does when he plays defense.\u00a0 He might be better suited for martial arts.\u00a0 Or ballet. Silas has his strengths, but they may not lie in athletics. \u00a0However, watching Ethan play, I am watching the continuation of a legacy right before my very eyes.\u00a0 He\u2019s good.\u00a0 His ball handling skills are pretty impressive for a kid who has limited experience with basketball.\u00a0 He scored 12 points in the first game of the season and matched that yesterday.\u00a0 But more importantly than scoring points, watching Ethan play I can see that he is carrying on the Jacobs story.\u00a0 I said yesterday, it reminds me of sitting in a gym watching my brother.\u00a0 Ethan celebrates the victories of his teammates and at one point I watched him ask a kid on the other team if he was ok after being elbowed in the ear during a rebound attempt.\u00a0 Ethan is consistently the first one to the other end of the court, he never stops moving and he puts his whole heart into the game.<\/p>\n

Watching him was a flashback to watching my brother.\u00a0 It was like watching my dad\u2019s passion for sports.\u00a0 And it was like watching\u2026me.\u00a0 I say all the time, Ethan is exactly like me.\u00a0 He is stubborn, and feisty, and loud, and easily distracted.\u00a0 But he is caring, compassionate and selfless.\u00a0 He is energetic and spunky.\u00a0 He is passionate and he goes at full force until it\u2019s over.\u00a0 And through it all, he never stops smiling.<\/p>\n

Yesterday I had the privilege of seeing the next chapter of my story as it begins to unfold. I won\u2019t ever claim to be perfect, not even close, but if Ethan is an indication of what my legacy looks like, then I must be doing something right.<\/p>\n

\"Saturday<\/a>

Saturday morning…setting the sky on fire.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My dad and I always used to say, after a tough run, \u201cIt hurts good.\u201d\u00a0 Now that I made it through my first real week of training in 2014, I can assure you that by the end of the week I hurt good.\u00a0 This week I invited several old friends back into my routine.\u00a0 My […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","hentry","category-randomthoughts","post_format-post-format-aside"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s4eO4v-legacy","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=585"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":589,"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585\/revisions\/589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ramblingrunnergirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}