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Here Come The Butterflies

May 12, 2012 By

I am participating in the 2012 Wordcount Blogathon, which means one post every day for the month of May.

Two weeks and one day from now, I will be lining up for my first half-marathon of the season, the Toronto Womens Half-Marathon. I am looking forward to this race immensely. Not only for the chocolate station. And shallow and all as I am, not only for the aid stations manned by shirtless firefighters who douse you with water.

I am excited about the challenge of it. With the help of my friend and coach Phaedra, I have really been pushing the boundaries in my training this season. I have managed to survive some fair significant disruptions, like unexpected travel to South Africa and a couple of bouts of illness.

The two races that I have done this year – the Good Friday Ten-Miler and the Toronto Yonge Street 10K – have both yielded PB’s (personal best times). I am eager to see if I can repeat the performance over a longer distance.

I just have to get through the final phase of training, which is referred to by many runners as Taper Madness. While tapering is an essential part of training, it can be a period fraught with anxiety and mild (or not-so-mild) paranoia.

The science behind tapering is this: you spend twelve or fourteen weeks training intensively for this event, putting in your mileage and your speed work, having a battle of wits with hills, and spending entire Sunday mornings out on the road. You build your stamina and your strength, and you get used to spending long periods of time on your feet.

The training is a long process that should be properly planned and carefully executed. And if you’re not physically capable of running the distance of a half-marathon two weeks prior to the race, chances are that you won’t be ready on race-day either. The last two weeks don’t really have any value in terms of building your fitness level or your strength, so you are better off cutting back your mileage and giving your muscles time to rebuild in time for the big day.

Because you are reducing your mileage, you have more of a build-up of energy, so you get jittery and anxious, and you start imagining that the twinge in your ankle means it’s broken, or that the little pimple on your chin means you have smallpox.

Some runners can get through the tapering period without incident. They are cool, calm and collected, and don’t suffer from any attacks of nerves. “Butterflies? What butterflies?” they ask with infuriating serenity, when you question them about whether they are nervous about their upcoming race.

Other runners cannot sit still. They pace around restlessly, talk a mile a minute and fidget incessantly. They turn into hypochondriacs, anxiously assessing every little ache and every occasion on which they need to clear their throats. Because they stop sleeping, they advance seventy-two levels in Farmville in a two-week period.

Guess which category I fall into? I’ll give you a hint: I’m sitting here typing this at 4:12 in the morning.

Technically, my taper hasn’t even started yet. It will start after my long run tomorrow. But I tend to start feeling the jitters right before that last long run. I feel that there’s a lot riding on the run. If it goes well, I will go into Race Day with confidence, but I will be worried about whether I can repeat the performance. If it goes badly, I will be obsessing about whether I’m ready for the race.

So the butterflies have shown up, right on schedule. No matter what tomorrow’s long run is like, I am going to spend the next two weeks driving my family nuts and breaking out into occasional bouts of maniacal laughter. At night I will be banished to the sofabed because my incessant fidgeting will keep the husband awake. I will constantly bug the children, who will indulge me by playing with me for a while before my six-year-old gets exasperated and goes, “Momm-meeeee. You don’t play the gamethat way.”

Right now, the butterflies are not obeying any air traffic rules. They are flying around in chaos. But it is my hope that when the starting siren goes off on the day of the race, the butterflies will reconfigure themselves, arrange themselves into beautiful patterns, and fly in formation.

(Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ilker/287399328/. This picture has a creative commons attribution license.)

Filed Under: 2012 Wordcount Blogathon, Butterflies, Half-Marathon, Race, running, Taper Madness, Tapering, Toronto Womens Half-Marathon, Training Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
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I Am Autism

February 5, 2011 By

I’m having a bit of trouble writing today. The why’s are not important – suffice it to say that my mind is very unsettled. It cannot land on a single thought and stay there. It’s more like a butterfly, flitting around from here to there, alighting on one thing and staying there for but a moment before it takes off and flies somewhere else. They are elusive today, my thoughts are. Butterflies can, at times, seem lazy. They can seem almost laid-back, drifting and wafting rather than actually flying. But appearances are deceiving: despite the oft-times calming nature of their flight, butterflies can be very hard to catch.

I cannot catch my thoughts today.

So instead of actually trying to write something coherent myself, I want to share something that was emailed to me. It is quite profound, and obviously, it strikes quite a chord in me.

I Am Autism
By Marty Murphy

Hello. Allow me to introduce myself to you. My name is autism. Perhaps you know
me or know of me. I am a condition, “disorder” that affects many people. I
strike at will, when and where I want. Unlike Downs Syndrome or other birth
“defects,” I leave no marks on those I strike. In fact, I pride myself on the
ability to infiltrate a child’s life, while leaving him or her strikingly
handsome. Many people may not even know I am there. They blame the child for
what I cause him or her to do. I am autism and I do as I please.

I am autism. I strike boys and girls. infants and toddlers. I find my best
victims to be boys around the age of 2, but any child will do. I like children
and they are always the true victims, though I take hostage the others in the
child’s family as well. It is a bit like getting two for the price of one. I
affect one child and “infect” the entire family.

I am autism. I strike rich and poor alike. The rich combat me with education and
therapy. The poor shut their children away and cannot afford to fight me. I am
able to win in the lives of poor children more than I am those of the wealthy,
but I will try to take root anywhere.

I am autism. I am an equal opportunity disorder. I strike whites, blacks,
Mexicans, Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, Slavs, Japanese, Koreans and Fins. In
fact, I strike everywhere on Earth. I know no geographical bounds.

I am autism. I do not discriminate based upon religion either. I strike Jews and
Christians, Muslims and Buddhists, Atheists and Agnostics. I do not care what
religion a person is or what beliefs he may hold. When I strike, there will be
little time for any of that anyway. When they find me, they will question
everything they believe in, so why would I strike only one group? I have
affected followers of every religion on the planet.

I am autism and I am strong and getting stronger every year, every month, every
day, every minute and every second. I am concerned that money might be allotted
to combat me and my takeover of children, but so far, I have little to fear.
Some countries like Kuwait, are spending quite a bit of money to assist those
who I have targeted and some, like the United States, would rather spend money
on such ludicrous things as discovering the number of American Indians who
practice Voodoo, as opposed to combating me. In an atmosphere such as that, I
can flourish and wreck havoc at will. In places such as that, I rub my hands
with glee at the problems I can cause to children, their families and to the
society at large.

I am autism. When I come, I come to stay. I take the dreams and hopes of
families and trample them with delight. I see the fear and confusion in the eyes
of my victims and see the formation of wrinkles, the worries and pain on the
face of their parents. I see the embarrassment their child causes because of me
and the parents unsuccessful attempt to hide their child, and me. I see tears
the parents cry and feel the tears of their child. I am autism. I leave sorrow
in my wake.

I am autism. I taketh away and give nothing but bewilderment and loathing in
return. I take speech and learning. I take socialization and understanding. I
take away “common sense” and, if I am allowed to flourish, I take away all but
their physical life. What I leave behind, is almost worse than death.

I am autism. I fear nothing except courage, which I thankfully see little of. I
fear those who take a stand against me and attempt to fight me and bring others
into the fight as well. I fear those who try to make it safe and easier for my
victims in the community, and their families. I fear those who push ahead,
despite the fact that I am in tow. I fear the day I will be eradicated from the
planet. Yet, I do not fear too much right now. There is no need.

I am autism and I bet you know me or know of me. If you don’t, you probably will
soon. I am marching forward faster than I ever have before. I am looking for new
children all the time. I am looking for new children to consume and new lives to
destroy. I dread the day I will be looked upon with pity or worse yet,
understanding, for that day, is the day I will begin to die.

But in the mean time I am safe, free to prowl onward. Free to cause the pain and
suffering that I do so well. I am on a mission and have much work to do and
thankfully no one is stopping me yet.

Hello. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is autism. Perhaps you know me or
know of me, if not don’t worry, you will meet me soon.

Filed Under: autism Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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Taming the Butterflies

November 23, 2010 By

Sometimes I wonder how I stayed sane before I started running again.  The answer, of course, is that I probably didn’t.  Several years ago things got kind of hectic in my life.  I left my job in a whirl of negativity on the same day that my Dad, on the other side of the world, started chemotherapy. Six weeks later he died, and my guilt about not having made it home in time to see him alive plunged me into depression.  A year later, my second son was born, and I learned the hard way that post-partum depression does, in fact, exist, no matter what nonsense Tom Cruise may have been spouting at the time. A year or so after that, we were hit with George’s autism diagnosis.

So for a period of three years or so, we were very unsettled.  As soon as we came to grips with one thing, something else would crop up and derail us again. And in those days, I didn’t have running. I had no means of escape, no way of letting off steam.  Anger, despair, and sadness reigned supreme in my household.

Several years on, I look back at those days and wonder how on earth I got through it all. How did I endure the stress, the confusion, and the absolute lack of self-esteem without blowing a gasket?  My life now is so different.  I have a job that I enjoy. I love being Mom to my two beautiful boys.  I am getting married next year (the day after the Royal Wedding, no less!) to the man who has been by my side for the last ten years.  I have rediscovered running.  I am, for the most part, happy.

For the last little while, though, a certain level of anxiety and nervousness has been creeping in.  It’s not all bad – it is attributable to the fact that I have been making decisions to make some changes in my life, to make things better, and to confront ghosts from the past. The destination that I am aiming for is positive, but the journey to get there is somewhat unnerving.

What this means is that I have entire herds of butterflies constantly jiving around in my belly. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind them being there.  Butterflies are lovely, and every healthy belly needs a few of them from time to time.  I just wish they weren’t breeding like rabbits, and I wish the little buggers would all dance to the same tune.  And I wish they were waltzing instead of breakdancing.

I get relief from this state of astonished nervousness when I run.  I am very focused as a runner.  When I’m on the road, I do not think about what’s going on in my life.  I think about what’s going on in my run.  How is my pace? Is my heart rate within range?  Does my body feel good enough for me to kick it up a notch or do I need to hold back?  Am I hydrated enough?  Do I need to take a gel?  And so on and so forth.  From time to time my thoughts drift into non-running-related territory, but they always come back to the running.

When all of this is going on, the butterflies don’t get much airtime.  They probably realize that no-one’s watching their manic performance, so they lie down and take a nap.  For whatever reason, when I am running, the butterflies are still.  I feel a sense of calm that is almost surreal. I always know that as soon as I stop running, the butterflies will wake up again, but in the moment, the lack of nervous agitation is a beautiful thing.

At the end of the day, though, I find that I have to embrace the nervousness, because it is symbolic of positive change. To cross the finish line, you have to run the race, even if the road you travel on takes you past places you weren’t sure you wanted to go.

Filed Under: life, running Tagged With: , , , , , , ,