Fish Stories

So I ran Ragnar, Wasatch Back. After years of how can I do this with other goals looming, babies to be born and a little good old fashioned fear, I did it. There was pain getting there, and pain after. It was worth it and I am already on board for next year. Yet, getting back in running shape after being a human incubator can have it consequences. It is like your hips have been unzipped and folded out like a suitcase. As soon as that suitcase empties its precious cargo you are ready to close it tight and neat. Well, it takes longer than anticipated. Especially after your suitcase has been filled close to its weight limit, thanks Jack. The hinges are a bit creaky. Not to mention all the other anatomical features that somehow must travel back to where they came from. Some never make it back quite right. So thinking that all was back to normal was a figment of my imagination that led to bursitis in my hip--self-diagnosed and confirmed by my personal physician. So, after pretending I was being good, sneaking in a 10K, maybe a few fast miles on the treadmill, I walked with my inflamed bursa in my hip and tail between my ankles deciding I needed time off. So what to do?

Swim. Yes Swim. Beautiful non impact swimming. That sore hip surrounded by nurturing bubbles and no pressure on that bursa. So after a few youtube tutorials I went. Now when you go to lap swim at 5:30 in the morning be prepared for two things. 1. Everyone there looks like Michael Phelps, all decked out in professional swim attire, caps and goggles. 2. You will have to swim next to someone. Someone who will know you don't know what you're doing. It is hard to fake it when it comes to swimming. I brought Harris's goggles I think I bought at All a Dollar a year a go, no cap. I did purchase me a suit. I figured I must somehow look the part. I almost turned around and left. I am a land dweller. I do much better on tracks, bikes and roads. I like to swim, but I feel the gazelle in me more than the dolphin. Not that I look like a gazelle and really in my black and white suit I feel a bit more like an Orca. Yet, I bit my lip edged towards an empty lane next to an older lady who didn't seem to pose much of a threat to my inexperience. I dove in and swam. Of course I now how to swim. My childhood swim instructors earned there $5.oo an hour. Lets just say I was a hair under confident. Every thing I had read in preparation had made me feel intimidated. "Swim: the dreaded event of the triathlon. Most athletes just want to push through it and survive." What? It is that difficult. Push through it? There is a chance of non survival? So weighing my mortality I jumped in a swam. I survived my first short swim and went back to youtube for more instruction.

Youtube is to me as Wikipedia is to Aaron. I have a question say, what stretches loosen IT bands? I find a tutorial or two and watch. I am know a guru of all things bursitis and IT found on youtube. You can consider me your go to girl. So after watching some breathing and stroke techniques, I bought a swim cap and was back poolside a few days later. I swam, I swam as if I could no longer walk. My feet became fins and I glided. I grew gills with my newly learned breathing techniques, I was consistently inhaling and exhaling. The thing about swimming is you think you are going to be bored. No music playing and those blue shiny tiles are only amusing for about four laps. Yet, something happens. You enter the aquatic world and everything sounds different, everything feels different, everything looks different. I find myself in swim attire, an aquanaut. Discovering the undiscovered, at least for me. So there you have it. My only problem is how to fit it into my schedule, how to run as much as I want, swim as much as I want, and bike as well. Yea, it is a dilemma for another day as swimming and an occasional bike ride will have to suffice for now.

UP next:Kari get your Annie Oakley on.

Reinvention

Every time I've attempted to a new blog, I've failed. Even my mainstay, Stories by Kari and Aaron, I leave weeks, more like months unattended. It remains dry and dusty, begging for a small trickle of information and only unwanted comments are seem to flourish. I turn my back to it and act like it is not there. I have a blog? At one time I would answer this with insistence that you must join my cozy readership of three and make it four. I mean, my life is so filled that you just need to come take your daily scoop of Kari. So why make a final attempt to till new blogging ground? Well, it is just this: I am thirty-three and coincidentally my age dons my favorite number. Oh, thirty three, the parallelism of an odd number not a prime number. A palindrome of the numeral set. So If I was much more numerically sound, I would have more to say, but all in all I like it. When assigned a student number in fifth grade that was mine and it stuck. So I always wondered where I would be at this point. I have to say my dreams were not far off. I have my dream man and dream family. I think when choosing out families I went right down aisle and had no problem choosing my three progeny. They probably were right next to the Chocolate Chex. I might have only three children not five, and I might now and again put too much salt in the meatloaf, have no lipstick on when Aaron comes home or yell at my ten year old. I'm working on that, the yelling part that is. So really my life should be splendid in all its splendors. What more could I be longing for? I have it all. All that anyone really needs. In fact my body is fizzing over with blessings. It is blissful.
Then one day I woke up. My milk had dried up and Harris's head can rest under my nose. Anna is starting to have a willowy sense about her. My hip hurt and that canceled my morning run for now almost three weeks. Bursitis isn't to be messed with. Everything seemed to topple down. My main escape, my 'me' thing had been halted. O.K.,you all can hear those whining violins, but this is how I felt. I wanted to crawl in between my parents as a scared and hurt three year old and tell them that I needed to return my life. Yet, they are in Africa and that makes all of that a little inconceivable. So I did the next best thing and begged, whined and pleaded my sweet husband to fix it. There has got to be something all that schooling taught you to cure my ails, especially this hip. Yet it all comes down to time. Time moves slowly in some cases and light speed in others.
This morning as I mulled over our conversation last night, I realized that although I love what I do there is a bit more to me. I haven't gotten all the way to the center of me yet. It is a bit harder, a few more layers exist now after having Jack. No, I am not embarking on a new career, or a world tour to find me. No, I am not going to cook my way through Julia Child's book. My first priority is always four people. I would be going nowhere with out them. They are my fuel. They are the reason I write, breathe, and live. I chose to be home, it is where I need to be. Yet I want to find more parts of me to share. A new scent to go along with all my favorite old perfumes. It really isn't my season for complete evolution but, I think I might need a little zest. A little more effort needs to be put into my person. So come along with me as I dabble and wade.

So on I go to find what lies beneath.

First up: Why I momentarily dread the road and love the water. or, Was I fish in a different life?