Anyway, the point is, I've started running again. I love running. It makes me feel strong and tough and like I could conquer ANYTHING. You know, if ANYTHING involves jogging very slowly for 3 or 4 miles. Then I would need a break and some water and maybe to retie my shoe and then ANYTHING better watch out. 'Cause here I come.
I have now had enough children to recognize a pattern in my post-baby physical fitness recovery. I have learned that although I can lose the weight within a few months of stopping nursing, it takes me a full year to get my joints and muscles strong enough to run again. I have worked hard in the 14 months since Harry's birth and I am finally back to running. I love my dance classes and weight training, but running just feels different. It is liberating. It makes me feel like me again. It makes me feel like I could crush the really skinny moms with my gigantically muscular thighs. Although I doubt that will come up.
I ran in the rain this week and it was wonderful. Because it was not 95 degrees and because it feels very hard core to run in inclement weather. Granted, the only thing hard core about my life is that I occasionally touch human excrement with my bare hands, but running in the rain feels cool-girl tough to me right now. Like I should get a tattoo. Or go sky diving. Or both--maybe my tattoo should be of a parachute.
Running makes me feel like I could re-tile my water damaged kitchen floor by myself. And that I could probably just hang that drywall to finish off the attic closets while Jay is at work. Jay does not like to hear me say things like this because he occasionally comes home to find bizarre projects underway that result in us eating out for a week. He is right to be concerned.
Next week I will feel like the slowest runner ever and that I will never be able to break 5 miles and that my knees are just one more part of me that is inching toward the grave. But this week? I am invincible. This week I bought smaller jeans.
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