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Treadmill Running: Better Than Nothing

July 14, 2011 By

Today, for the first time in many months, I came face to face with the treadmill at the gym.

Anyone who’s read my previous posts about treadmills will know exactly how I feel about them. For those who haven’t, I will merely say that I’m not a fan of the lab-rat machines, but regard them as a necessary evil. There are times when road running is just not possible, and running on the treadmill is better than not running at all.

Over the last few months, when I have had to run on the treadmill, I have used the one at home. It sat gathering dust for a few years after my younger son, then aged two,  put his hand onto the treadmill while it was moving, and took off the top few layers of skin. He is now old enough to respect the treadmill, and he knows to stay well away from it.

Treadmill running at home is marginally better than treadmill running at the gym. For a start, my home treadmill has a natural incline to it, so even on its “flat” setting I can simulate outdoor running reasonably well. And in addition, I can watch what I want on the TV without having to plug headphones into a weird little box that may or may not work. So the home treadmill has been a reasonable enough stand-in for “real” running on occasions when I’ve had no-one to watch the kids.

I was supposed to do a tempo run yesterday morning, which under normal circumstances wouldn’t have been a problem. The only thing is that when I do morning runs during the workweek, I have to get out early. I have to be awake by 5:00, outside waiting for my GPS watch to get a signal by 5:10, and running by 5:15. I have discovered that running on less than six hours of sleep makes me feel sick (unless I am racing: I can race on virtually no sleep at all, but racing has its own special set of rules), so I have to be asleep by 11:00 the night before an early morning run.

The night before last, we were having a whole lot of things happening at home. No hot water. Kids refusing to settle. A visit from my accountant. A dryer that wasn’t drying properly, resulting in me having to put each load through the cycle twice.

I did not get to bed until shortly after midnight, and by then my husband and I were so wound up that neither of us could sleep, so we talked until the wee hours of the morning. I did not get to sleep until well after 1:00 in the morning.

There was no way I could run when I woke up. I felt nauseous when my alarm clock went off, and that was before I’d gotten out of bed, never mind attempted to actually run anywhere.

But runners can be flexible, so I decided that it was no problem. I would just move yesterday’s run to this morning, and tomorrow’s run to Friday.

Last night – or should I say this morning – I got to sleep at about 2:30. Fannnnnnn-tastic.

When my alarm went off this morning, I got up, thinking that maybe I should just bite the bullet and run. But as I got up, I felt light-headed. I actually swooned, like they did in eighteenth century novels.

I was left with no choice. Either skip the run entirely (Scandal! How could I even think that!), or I could put in time on the treadmill at the gym at lunchtime. Like I said before, treadmill running is better than not running at all, so the gym it was. I stuck my headphones in my ears and turned on the music, set my training watch, and programmed the treadmill for a 45 minute hill workout.

It was good. I mean, as good as a treadmill run can be. My legs felt strong, my heart rate – inexplicably – stayed in the 150-155 range despite the fact that I was running quite intensely, and I actually kind of enjoyed it. I’m not suggesting that I am going to make treadmill running a regular part of my program, I’m just saying that it’s not always so bad.

So my scheduled run was finally done – albeit a day and a half late – and I have taken another baby step towards my goal of shattering last year’s time for the Autism Run.

And I feel a sense of accomplishment that has me grinning like a village idiot.

(Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mahidoodi/199747855/)

Filed Under: Changing Plans, Exercise, Gym, Roadrunning, running, Training, Treadmill Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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95 Days And 6 Hours

July 13, 2011 By

95 days and 6 hours to go…

In 95 days and 6 hours, my heart will be racing and my adrenaline will be pumping.  I will be filled with nervous energy, and all of my senses will be on high alert, even though I probably will not have slept for a week.

In 95 days and 6 hours, I will be one of 20,000 runners waiting for the starters gun to go off, signalling the beginning of the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon and Half-Marathon.

In 95 days and 6 hours, I will start my Run for Autism – the race that I do for my son George, who is my inspiration and my reason for running. My son, who has taught me so much about myself, about life, about the things that really matter. My son, who I love so much that I sometimes think my heart will explode.

Up until now, I have had a poor season of training. A variety of illnesses, extreme weather conditions and family emergencies has conspired against me. Not to mention the not-so-small matter of getting married. I did succeed in running an 8km race in the Spring, but I have had to blow off not one but two half-marathons since then, because I have just not been ready for them. I have tried to follow some kind of regular training regimen, and I have been running just enough to keep up some kind of conditioning, but my training has been very much a stop-start kind of thing.

Until now.

Over the weekend, I gathered together pen and paper, the list of races I am registered for between now and my Autism Run, and my calendar. Thus armed, I plotted out a training program, a path to get me from here to there. It is a program that will work. By the time I’m done, I will be able to run the distance and run it well, as long as I stick with it.

My impediment is not lack of discipline. If I have a run scheduled, there are very few things that will deter me. From time to time I may have to shift a run to another time, or even to the following day, but if my schedule tells me to run, then I will run.

The only thing stopping me – barring unforeseen emergencies – is my health. It hasn’t been so great lately. I have been tired, run down, and prone to getting sick. Conventional running wisdom dictates that it is safe to run with a cold as long as all symptoms are above the neck, but practical experience has taught me that it is not a good idea. It might be perfectly safe, but it knocks my immune system down a few notches so that it takes me longer to recover.

So the way I see it, the one thing standing between me and my ability to totally rock this year’s race is my health. If my health is good, my training will take care of itself.

With that in mind, I have a plan. This is all stuff that I really should be doing anyway, but if planning it is what it will take, then so be it.

Here are some promises that I am making to myself (and we all know that it’s wrong to break a promise, regardless of who it’s made to):

I promise that I will hydrate myself properly, and not only during my training runs. And not only with coffee.

I promise that I will take my vitamins every day, because I definitely feel healthier when I do.

I promise that I will see a nutritionist, because my diet is one area where my self-control goes to the birds.

I promise that I will try harder (and “try” is the best I can do at this point) to get more sleep so that I am not literally running on the smell of an oil rag.

Four promises. Anyone can keep four promises, right? And they’re not even hard promises, with the possible exception of the last one.

I can do this. I can totally do this.

In 95 days and 6 hours, I will be ready.

Filed Under: autism, Countdown, health, life, running, Running for Autism, Training Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Lucky Number Six

July 12, 2011 By

Being a parent is hard. You have to deal with conflicts, challenges, lack of sleep, lack of privacy, loss of self-identity, turmoil, guilt, worry, heartache, tears, and the reality of never being able to eat a full meal without interruption. And that’s just with a regular kid.

When you add autism into the mix, you also add the sensory challenges, meltdowns, communication issues, various other autism-related challenges, guilt piled on you by the media and other parents because you chose to vaccinate your child, and uncomfortable stares and rude comments from strangers in grocery stores.

All parents need a break sometimes. Especially parents of children with autism or other special needs. We love our kids, and recognize that in order to be better for them, we need to take care of ourselves.

This is why God created respite workers, and for some lucky parents, the funding to pay for them.

Our respite worker adventures are in their fourth year. In that time, we have gone through five workers, and we have just started on our sixth.

Our first worker was fantastic. We found her at the daycare George went to. She was his favourite teacher there. And so, when she left the daycare and asked us if we would like her to do respite work with George, we jumped at it. Both of the kids loved her, and George eagerly anticipated his times with her. After two years with us, she called me with the news that she had suffered a relapse of breast cancer and needed to take time out to focus on her health. We were sad to see her go, but we completely understood.

After a search of about three months, we found a new respite worker. George took to her right away. She was organized but creative, firm but kindly. She engaged George in a very positive way. She was a lovely, lovely person, and we could tell that she had a gift for working with special needs children. Unfortunately for us, one of the therapy centres recognized the same gift in her, and hired her full-time as an instructor/therapist. She gave us plenty of notice, so that we could find a replacement before she left.

Respite worker #3 was easy enough to find. On paper she looked great. Lots of experience with special needs kids, working towards an early childhood education qualification, and sister to someone with autism. We thought this woman had it all, right down to the personal experience with her own brother.

She turned out to be spiteful and vindictive. She lasted for precisely two sessions, one of which had been a handover session with Respite worker #2.

On to Respite worker #4. We found her through an ad we placed in a local newspaper. She came for an interview, and seemed to interact well with George. We liked her, we hired her, and she agreed to start the following week. Unbeknownst to us, though, she had been actively seeking full-time employment and got offered a job a couple of days before she was due to start with us.

At this point, I was ready to throw up my hands in despair. Good respite workers – the ones who are good at what they do, are nice people, and stick around for longer than it takes to make a cup of coffee – are like gold dust.

I placed another ad, and got a number of responses. We settled on a very nice, down-to-earth lady. When she came for the interview, she produced a binder containing her resume, police clearance, references, and various CPR and First Aid certificates. The details that impressed me on her resume were that she had been with one of her respite families for about ten years, and the other one for even longer. This woman had a history of staying with her families, and she even spoke about the benefits of building a long-term relationship with the child. We liked her, we hired her. She started the following week.

And then, as fate would have it, a close family member of hers was seriously injured in an accident, and another close family member had a heart attack and needed bypass surgery. Our new respite worker had to temporarily suspend work so she could take care of her family. After a break of a month or so, she came back, but that only lasted for two weeks. One of her family members relapsed, and she had to take time off again. She stopped replying to my texts and returning calls, and as nice and all as she was, I had to make the decision to cut her loose.

And now, as of yesterday, we have started with Respite worker #6. I am hesitant to make any sweeping statements at this point, but she seems to have been dropped into our laps by the smiling gods of fate. She has been a student volunteer in George’s classroom for the last two years. She knows him, and she seems to like him. He seems to like her.

I am really hoping she will be our Lucky Number Six.

Filed Under: autism, parenting, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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Not Autistic Enough?

July 11, 2011 By

Apparently, my son is not autistic enough to qualify for television documentary stardom.

Several months ago, we were approached by the producers of a television documentary series. They were planning a program about whether or not there was some kind of environmental link to autism, and they wanted to get footage of families living with autism. I exchanged a few emails with the producers, and eventually they came to our home to meet us and see George.

We were perfectly happy to be a part of this. We are strong on autism advocacy and awareness, and we take any opportunity we can to help spread the word about the realities of autism – both the challenges faced and the potential for achievement.

When the producers came to see us, something about their approach to the conversation raised a red flag to us. We got the sense that they were trying to push one side of a particular autism debate without giving any airtime to the other side. What the debate is and what side of the fence we fell on is not relevant. Our issue was with the integrity of the whole thing. It just seemed to us that the agenda behind this documentary was to sensationalize an aspect of autism.

But we kept an open mind. Maybe we were reading this wrong, and just needed more context. After the meeting, we sent the producers on their way and waited for them to get in touch with us.

About three weeks passed with no contact apart from a couple of basic “we’ll be in touch soon” emails. Eventually, I got a message from one of the producers, telling us that George was “not autistic enough” to be included in the program. Apparently, they were looking for a child with very severe autism – one who is completely non-verbal and very low-functioning – so that they could better “demonstrate the challenges of a typical autism family.”

Herein lies my issue: there is no such thing as a “typical autism family”. Autism manifests in so many different ways. There are kids who are fully verbal but go into meltdown when someone tries to touch them. Then there are kids – like my George – who hardly talk at all, but who love to be hugged and cuddled. Some kids are academically sound and socially weak, others have some social skills but do not perform academically. There are kids who excel in math, music, art, or any number of other things, and there are some who don’t. There are the kids with sensory processing issues and the kids without. There are so many elements of autism, and they can be combined in an infinite number of ways, with varying degrees of intensity.

With all of this variation, how can a couple of producers, neither of whom has had any prior personal experience with autism, talk about a “typical autism family”? Every family with a child autism has its own very unique, individual challenges to deal with, and I worry about the media showing only one side of it and calling it “typical”. That, to me, is disrespectful and unfair to the vast majority who are not represented.

The way I see it, our initial reservations had merit: the producers want to sensationalize autism. They want to show only the negative, challenging, heartbreaking aspects of it, and give no airtime to the possibilities, the potential, and the idea that people with autism can and do make valuable contributions to society. They want to profile a theory – a theory, mind you – about what might cause autism in some kids – and present it as something that is relevant to all kids.

I don’t think this kind of reporting does any favours to anyone. Not the families who have to live with autism. Not the public, who are not being informed about autism in a fair, unbiased way. And certainly not the kids themselves, who are being portrayed in a way that is only accurate for a few of them.

I am quite happy for my family to not be the vehicle for that kind of media sensationalism.

(Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/16961193@N06/2887772100/)

Filed Under: Accurate Portrayal of Autism, autism, Documentary, Sensationalism, Television Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
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Spotlight On Friendship: Jenny

July 8, 2011 By

Today I want to tell you about my oldest friend. Not “oldest” in the sense of being geriatric, but “oldest” in the sense of being the person who has put up with my nonsense for longer than anyone else.

I met Jenny at the start of fifth grade, when we were both new kids at our school. I remember us standing together at the front of the classroom on our first day, being introduced to our new classmates. Both of us felt as if we were different to the other kids in our class, but we felt an immediate kinship with each other. By recess that day, we had become best friends.

Over the next several years, as we saw friendships form and dissolve all around us, Jenny and I were inseparable. Her personality balanced perfectly with mine. She was the one who was good at art, I was the one who was good at math. She was bubbly and outgoing, I was more reserved. Our core values were the same, and we had enough common interests to be able to bond. But we also had enough diversity to retain our own individuality.

I was shy and socially awkward as a teenager. The only person I could really open up to and be completely myself with was Jenny.

When we were in high school we made a promise to each other, that we would be friends forever, and that when we were old ladies, we would sit together on a porch doing our knitting. When we discovered just how crap at knitting I am, we amended the promise. She would do the knitting, and I would keep the coffee flowing. We’re planning to be manic old ladies, permanently buzzing from caffeine.

In my late teens and early twenties, my life went a little weird. I went away to university, and when I came back, I had learned some very difficult lessons from the School of Hard Knocks. I’m not sure if Jenny realizes how much of a salvation she was for me at that time. I was feeling out of sorts, and she was my friend. I was feeling directionless, and she got me a job in the same office where she was working. I felt adrift, and she was my safe harbour. She helped keep me grounded.

And then, to my eternal shame and regret, I let her down. I did something that hurt her, and that cost me the only true friendship I had ever had.

Life went on, but I never stopped thinking of Jenny and kicking myself for my own stupidity.

A few years after my split with Jenny, I had installed myself in a solid career and bought my own apartment. One evening after I got home from work, my phone rang. I did not immediately recognize the voice on the other end, but then the realization dawned on me: “Holy crap, it’s JENNY!”

We went out for pizza and caught up. I told her I was sorry. She said she forgave me. I cried – tears of regret at having hurt her, and tears of joy that I had my best friend back.

And I really did have her back. Over the next several years, we stood by each other for all of life’s major events. I caught the bouquet at her wedding. When she had a baby she asked me to be the godmother. When I became a mom myself, she was the first person I called when I came home from the hospital. She comforted me at my dad’s funeral, and although she couldn’t be there for my wedding, I know she was thinking of me.

The strongest of friendships can survive any storm. Jenny and I had our storm, and it was a big one. But in the end, our friendship survived, and endures to this day, even though we live on opposite sides of the world.

At some point a few decades from now, a porch somewhere will be waiting for two old ladies, one doing her knitting, the other making coffee.

Filed Under: Friendship, life Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
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Out Of The Darkness: Overcoming Post-Partum Depression

July 4, 2011 By

This post was a hard one to write, even though the events described happened several years ago. It took me a number of days to get this all down, and it has taken another few days to actually decide whether or not to publish it. My hope in publishing this is that it will make a difference to somebody. Maybe you’re a new mom who is going through post-partum depression. Or perhaps you know a new mom who seems to be retreating into herself. If your life is touched in any way by post-partum depression, know that there are things that can be done. Talk to your friends and family, seek help from medical professionals. And whatever you do, don’t lose hope.

My younger son James was born at a tumultuous time in my life. I had lost my dad to cancer a year previously, and me and my husband were going through some challenging times in our life together. At around that time, we were also starting to realize that there was something wrong with George and we had started to experience the frustration of wrangling a referral out of our family doctor.

I sometimes wonder, when I look back, whether all of these factors led to the post-partum depression I went through. Or perhaps it would have happened anyway. This is an illness that can strike the most unlikely of victims.

I knew within a couple of days after giving birth that the utter bleakness I was feeling was more than a case of “baby blues”. What I had experienced with George two years previously – the mild sadness, the anxiety, the tendency to be emotionally weird – that was baby blues. What I was going through now was completely different.

On New Years Eve that year, when James was six days old, I was sitting in front of the TV nursing my newborn while I watched CNN coverage of festivities around the world. At about five to midnight, Gerard brought me a cup of tea, and as he set it down beside me, he asked in surprise, “Why are you crying?”

I was just as surprised as he was. I had not even noticed the floods of tears rolling silently down my cheeks.

Even though I was filled with this feeling of terrifying – emptiness – I did not initially label what I was experiencing with any name. The first time I thought of the term post-partum depression in relation to myself, James was about two months old. A replay of an old Oprah episode was on – the episode where Tom Cruise spouted forth about how there was no such thing as post-partum depression, and how all new moms could solve all of their problems by eating right and exercising.

What an idiot, I remember thinking. This thought was followed by the sudden light-bulb moment in which I realized that I was suffering from post-partum depression.

There was a good news and a bad news aspect to this discovery.

The good news was that I now had a name for what I was going through. I had something to Google, and sure enough, on every checklist I found, I was able to put checkmarks beside all but one or two of the signs and symptoms. I had a basis for research, and I felt some validation that I wasn’t simply going mad.

The bad news was that I too far down the path of post-partum depression to be able to actually do anything about it. Talking to someone – my doctor, my friends, or even my husband – would have taken energy. And that was something that I had in very short supply. Just getting through the day was an accomplishment. Once I had attended to the basic needs of my kids – feeding, diapering, bathing, dressing – there was nothing left over. No reserves of energy whatsoever.

And because I didn’t do anything about it, my illness got steadily worse and worse. I didn’t talk to anyone about it, and no-one recognized the signs. My friends and family saw me retreating further and further into myself, but they did not know why. They saw that the kids were obviously being taken care of, so they didn’t realize that there was anything to be concerned about.

Even when my depression was at its very worst, I was not suicidal in the sense of wanting to actively go out and kill myself (again, that would have taken energy that I just didn’t have), and I was never in danger of harming the kids. Their health, safety and happiness were my top priorities – my only priorities.

I did start to think about dying, though. I fantasized about what it would be like to die in a car accident, or to have a sudden heart attack, or to be shot during a bank robbery. I thought about being on a plane that had a bomb on it. What if I had some undiagnosed condition, and simply went to sleep one night and didn’t wake up?

My depression went untreated for over a year, and by then I honestly thought that I was lost forever. Right after George was diagosed with autism, I went to see my family doctor, who had received a copy of the diagnostic report. I was seeing the doctor about something unrelated – an old ankle injury was acting up – but he immediately picked up that there was something seriously wrong.

My doctor, who had been absolutely dismal at detecting signs of early developmental delay in George, was able to tell right away that I was going through a major depression. He put me on medication and insisted on seeing me once a week until I was out of the woods.

The pills were both good and bad for me. The bad part was that they made me feel angry. While I was taking them, I was mad at everyone and everything. Back then, I didn’t even have running as a stress coping mechanism, so the anger just sat there and frightened the living daylights out of me.

The good thing, though, was that the pills helped with the depression. I started feeling some energy again – even though the energy itself was negative, it was a start. Negative energy was better than the absolute empiness and desolation that I had been feeling for so long now.

And so gradually, I started finding my way back. With time, I rekindled my relationship with my husband, and I discovered the true joy of parenting. I went back to work and started to find my own identity again. I started running. Little buds of hope started to grow within me.

I found my way out of the darkness, and into love and light.

Filed Under: Help, Illness, Medical, parenting, Post-Partum Depression Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Why I Don’t Eat Lentils, And Other Stories

July 2, 2011 By

My grandmother

It is the mid-1980’s. I am fourteen years old, in ninth grade, and I am sleeping soundly. In the early hours of the morning, I suddenly wake up with a jolt. Somehow, I just know that my grandmother has died. I know this with the same certainty that I know the sun rises in the east. Granny has had a cold, but her health has been as good as can be expected for a woman in her 80’s. There has certainly been nothing to indicate her impending death. And yet, as I wake up, I know for a fact that she is gone, but I don’t have a clue as to how this knowledge has come to me.

As I lie in bed wondering what to do with this knowledge, I hear the phone ring. I listen to the sounds of feet running to answer the phone, followed by the muted tones of conversation. My door opens and Mom comes into the room. She seems surprised to find me awake so early.

“Granny has died,” Mom tells me.

“I know,” I say. Mom looks at me a little oddly, but lets my remark go, probably putting it down to just-woken-up bleariness. I sit up in my bed and Mom and I hug one another. She has lost her mother and now has no surviving parents. I have lost my grandmother, a woman I had loved dearly.

This loss is going to be hard on both of us.

One of the earliest memories I have of my grandmother is her lentil soup. The woman was a marvel in the kitchen – not so much because of the quality of her cooking, but because of her uncanny ability to create full meals with virtually no ingredients. She had raised three kids on her own while my grandfather was fighting in World War II, and lack of both supplies and money had made her very inventive and resourceful.

She used a lot of lentils. Lentils were cheap and nutritious, and there was apparently no problem getting hold of them during the war. Old habits die hard, I suppose, so thirty years after the war had ended, when supplies were plentiful and the economy was strong, my grandmother was still making her lentil soup.

It was, without any doubt whatsoever, the worst lentil soup. Ever. Granny would dish out these bowls of the stuff for her seven grandchildren, and make us sit at the table until we had finished it all. I mean, I know it was good for us and everything, but it just tasted so – horrible.

To this day, my friends, I cannot eat lentils. Not in soup, not in salad, not in anything. Those dark days of lentil soup tyranny ruined me for lentils forever.

Fortunately, there was a flip side to the lentil soup. My grandmother made the BEST banana fritters in the whole world. Let me tell you how good these things were. I don’t like bananas. I hate the taste, and I hate the texture, and I’d rather set my face on fire than eat them. But Granny’s banana fritters? I could eat those things until the cows came home. And she was the only one who could make them. She did give me the recipe, and I tried, but she just had that magic touch. When she died, so did the fritters.

I was quite an accomplished pianist in those days. I was very serious about it, and every year I would do practical piano exams to advance another level. I was always allowed to take the whole day off school on music exam days, and when the exam was done, my mom would drive me straight over to my grandmother’s place, where there would be some freshly made banana fritters waiting for me, made in honour of that day’s accomplishment.

Every summer, I spent a week or so with my grandmother. She lived on a large property off the beaten track, and there were acres of open space to play in. She had loads of dogs (including an ancient fox terrier named Chaka Charlie who always made me feel a little freaked out), and a coop full of pigeons. My cousins lived just down the road, and together we would play elaborate adventure games in Granny’s massive yard.

And in the evenings, after dinner, Granny and I would spend hours playing checkers. We would drink our tea and eat chocolate-dipped shortbread made by my aunt, who lived with my grandmother and still lives in the house today. And we would play endless games of checkers. Granny was a master at the game, and although I did win from time to time, this was very, very rare.

The last time I stayed over at my grandmother’s place, she asked me if I would teach her to play chess. Immediately, I agreed. This would be fun. My grandmother definitely had the mind for chess. She would have been fantastic at it.

As it happened, though, I woke up one morning when I was fourteen, and before the phone had even rung, I knew that my grandmother was no longer with us. I never got to teach her how to play chess.

I’ll always have the memories, though.

I just wish I could figure out how to make those banana fritters.

 

 


Filed Under: Childhood, family, Grandmother Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Running Through The Fields On A Summers Day

June 20, 2011 By

My next half-marathon, which takes place a month from now, will involve a variety of running surfaces. The route will take runners along trails, on the streets, through a tunnel going under the highway, and through a number of fields in the farming community hosting the run.

Training for this event is proving to be interesting. For one thing, I have to do my training runs on a mix of terrains – easier said than done, for someone who lives in a definitively urban area. But still, there are ways and means, and I’ve been trying to incorporate the trails in our local parks into my routes.

The bigger challenge for me is the fact that this race is happening on July 17th, in other words, slap-bang in the middle of summer. Although I hail from sunny climes, and probably have more endurance for hot-weather running than most North American runners, I’m not a complete masochist, and still opt to run in cooler conditions where possible.

But this race, taking place at a time of year when the mercury is already hitting 30° Celsius by eight in the morning, is forcing me to change my usual training strategy. Because where I would usually go running at 5:00 a.m., I am now looking for opportunities to run later in the day, when it’s warmer. It’s all about acclimatization. When race day rolls around, I don’t want to be the weasel who cannot handle running in the heat. I want to be the one who runs strongly throughout.

And that is why I voluntarily headed out for a 16km  run shortly after lunchtime on Saturday. It was hot. Blisteringly. Although the actual temperature was only 19° Celsius, the humidity reading was pushing it up to the mid-thirties. Although this would never have potential to be a run I would describe as “pleasant”, the heat in itself was not the whole problem. I had not fueled myself properly for the run. More importantly, I had not hydrated myself. So not only was I hot, I was intensely thirsty as well, and I just didn’t have the energy stores I needed.

After 6km I gave up, and decided to do the long run the following morning when it was cooler. Usually I would hate the idea of cutting a run short, but since I had initially intended to run on Sunday anyway, I felt OK about it. I just chalked this up as a bonus 6km run.

When I got home I looked at my training schedule and saw that I wasn’t even supposed to do 16km this weekend. I was only supposed to do 10km. If I’d realized that I would have stuck out my Saturday run for the full 10km.

Maybe next time I will consult my training schedule before I hit the road.

(Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stamargo/4894061863/)

Filed Under: running, Summer, Uncategorized, Weather Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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If He Can Do It, So Can I

June 15, 2011 By

Last night, my son George was upset. He was distressed for the entire evening, crying and looking at us sadly with tears escaping from his beautiful big blue eyes. I could tell that this wasn’t just a case of a kid being in a bad mood. Something specific was bugging him. I just didn’t know what it was.

It was heartbreaking. There was this child, my beautiful boy, clearly wanting or needing something, and he was not able to communicate what it was. It was not for lack of trying. He was making supreme efforts to find the words and get them out, but no matter how much I tried, I just couldn’t understand.

In the end, George was just looking at me with an expression that told me he didn’t blame me for not getting it, that although he was sad, he was used to not being able to express himself, used to not being understood.

It was that look, the expression of resignation, that broke my heart. The idea that my child is already, at the age of 7, getting used to a life of hardship, just kills me. I guess this kind of acceptance has to happen sometime, because George’s life is never going to be the same as most other people’s, but still. It’s a difficult pill for a parent to swallow.

Moments like this strengthen my resolve where my running is concerned. On Sunday evening, I ran 14km on the treadmill. That’s a long way to run on a lab-rat machine, but really, I didn’t have any choice. Circumstances were such that it was the treadmill or nothing. And because I have a half-marathon a month from, now, I had to put in the distance.

Just because I deemed it necessary to run for 90 minutes on the treadmill, that doesn’t mean I liked it. It was very hard. The running part was OK. It was the mental resolve part that got me. Treadmill running is mind-numbingly dull, no matter what you do to try and distract yourself, and it took all of my self-discipline to keep going for the full distance.

Many of my long runs – even the ones I do on the open road – are tests more of my mental fortitude than my physical abilities. I know that I can run the distance. I have the base of physical fitness, and I have developed a running form that works for me. The mechanics of my body work just fine. The trouble is that my mind keeps trying to tell me that I’ve been running for a long time, and really, I should be getting tired by now. I have developed techniques to keep myself mentally strong during my runs. Playing music, thinking of things that are not running related, focusing on my body and how it feels as I run. The most effective technique I have, though, is this: all I have to do to keep going is think of the reason I’m doing it.

Every step I take, every aching muscle I endure, every toenail that I lose – it’s all for George. All of this training takes me closer to my Run For Autism, the event I use to raise funds for autism services to benefit my son and other people like him. Running for my child – what better motivation could there possibly be?

People sometimes ask me how I do it, how I go for all of those long runs and then, at the end of it, go out and race for thirteen miles.

For me, it’s easy. All I do is think of my boy. If he can live every day of his life with the challenges he faces, surely I can manage a two-hour run.

If he can do it, so can I. And he is my inspiration.

For details about my Run For Autism and how to support the cause, please visit my race page.

Filed Under: autism, fundraising, life, running, Running for Autism Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Why I Can’t Eat Mangoes Even Though They’re Yummy

June 14, 2011 By

Whenever I’m at the grocery store with George, the first thing we have to do is get a pineapple. In the earlier days of the pineapple obsession, he would take the pineapple home and stick Mr. Potato Head parts into it. He doesn’t do that anymore. He just likes having a pineapple to carry around.

Weird, I know, Other people’s kids carry cuddly teddy-bears around. My son carts around a piece of fruit that could take someone’s eye out.

Anyway, a couple of days ago when we went shopping, I allowed him to pick up the obligatory pineapple. And because fair is fair, I had to allow James to select some fruit as well.

“I want a big, juicy mango,” said James.

No, no, no, no, NOOOOOOOO.

Much to James’ chagrin, I cannot let mangoes into my house. I’m afraid of them. I won’t even walk past them in the grocery store.

“Anything but mangoes,” I said to James, who sulkily selected some pears instead.

I was never really exposed to mangoes until I went to Israel in the early 1990’s. When I had been in Israel for almost a year, I found myself working for a farmer in the Golan Heights, right in the north. For several months, I was a real farm-girl, doing real farm work. I would be up and in the fields by four in the morning, driving my tractor, spraying crops with pesticide, repairing irrigation systems, hanging bananas, you name it.

The pay wasn’t great and the hours were long, but my employer treated me and his other farmhand well, kept us stocked with beer, and allowed us to knock off at lunchtime on Fridays. Best of all, he allowed us free rein to eat the crops we farmed whenever we liked. As a result, most of our breaks were taken under the trees with mango juice dripping from our fingers as we consumed the delicious fruit.

Let me pause for a moment to say that Israel produces fantastic mangoes. They are big and juicy, and oh-so-sweet-and-delicious.

One frightening day, however, my mango-eating heyday had to come to a screeching halt.

On the morning of that fateful day, I noticed a strange-looking mark on my wrist. It was roughly oblong, and looked a bit like a railway track. It was as itchy as hell. I didn’t think anything of it: me and my fellow farmhand, Alan, were always getting cuts and scrapes without really noticing. So I ignored the mark and went on my merry, crop-spraying, mango-eating way.

That night I felt a little under the weather – that feeling you get when you’re coming down with a cold. Assuming that I was, indeed, coming down with a cold, I took some headache pills and went to bed early.

I woke up with a jolt at about midnight, with the nagging feeling that something wasn’t quite right. It didn’t take me long to figure out the problem: I wasn’t breathing. No matter how I tried to expand my lungs, I just couldn’t get any air past my larynx. And so, perhaps understandably, I started to panic.

I realized that somehow, I had to get the attention of Alan, my coworker and room-mate. I would have screamed, only this would have required me to draw breath and that was a problem. So I did the only thing I could think of: I raised my fist and pounded on the wall.

I was aware of Alan stirring and groggily using some colourful language. My persistent banging forced him to get up, though, and he only had to look at me once to realize that something was seriously wrong.

What happened next is a blur, but I know involved a lot of frantic rushing around and a trip to the hospital, where I was diagnosed with a serious and potentially life-threatening allergy to mangoes. I was treated and released the following day, and given a life-long ban on anything to do with mangoes.

I cannot eat them. I cannot touch them – those marks on my skin turned out to be burn marks from mango juice. I cannot even inhabit the same airspace as them, because inhaling their scent can be as bad for me as actually eating them.

Giving up mangoes was tough. Not only the fruit, but the fields. All of a sudden, I was deprived of the fields full of mango trees, with their mixture of hot sunshine and cool shade and of course, the fruits themselves. And I was banished to the banana plantations, with the oppressive overhead leaf coverage, the scorpions hiding in the bunches of bananas, and the fact that the bananas weren’t ripe.

And the fact that twenty years later, I would have to deal with a whining child who couldn’t get a mango in a grocery store.

(Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/digital1/3060425819)

Filed Under: Farming, hospital, Israel, Mangoes, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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