Karen's Journey

What's a Tofurkey Day race without a little -- or a lot -- of snow? I ran a 10km race on Thanksgiving morning. Actually it was billed as a 10km, and then sometime after registration but before packet pickup, changed to a "10K-plus." Ten kilometers is approximately equivalent to 6.2 U.S. miles. This one would be closer to 6.5 miles we were told, due to a change in the location of the start line. Great. I'd been running six miles in my training runs, knowing that if I could get through six miles, the final point-two would be an adrenaline-filled surge to the finish line. Now that was going to turn into two full laps of an outdoor track. For athletes other than Olympic marathoners, that is a long way to kick. I sucked it up and set off with 450 other runners in a blinding snowstorm and temperatures in the teens. At least the wind wasn't blowing -- the weather forecast had predicted near zero wind chills. In comparison, 17 degrees felt absolutely balmy. My ...

Letter to Santa reading comprehension assignment. I think my head might explode. T attends public school. Public school. Yet every year, the entire month of December is devoted to lessons with Christmas themes. The anticipation of Christmas has him unhinged. Does it every year. We deliberately avoid Elf on a Shelf and advent calendars and advent wreaths. We don't count down the days to Christmas -- although no doubt he's doing it in his head -- we try to keep on an even keel and not deviate from routine any more than possible. I could have throttled the kindergarten teacher when T arrived home with a bell made out of green construction paper to which there was attached a strand of red and green construction paper loops. The instructions that came home with it told us to have him remove one loop each day until he removed the last loop -- that would be Christmas Eve! Woo hoo -- downward spiral child! And that is not a new yoga position. This year I warned th...

The context in which this year's story takes place can be read here:  A Vist With St. Nick 2012 Today was once again Breakfast With Santa day at our local fire department. Last year's visit was a spectacular failure.  Christmas season is T's traumaversary time combined with holiday excitement dysregulation -- let's just call it a perfect storm--and my best method of coping would probably be to just hide out in the house with the kid for a month, emerging after New Year's Day, but I can't home school, and they send these kids home with the flyers in their folders and they pull them out and show them to you, begging to go to see Santa, and there's no pretending you don't know when or where it is. I find myself longing for the day he no longer believes in Santa -- I've never encouraged it -- and then I realize I'm wishing his life away, so I stop myself. He went from a tiny four-year-old to an almost-as-tall-as-me-eight-year-old in the b...

One would think this might be remembered as a happy time.   Let me start out by saying it's not entirely my fault. For reasons I cannot fathom, T's class had a Thanksgiving party today. Seriously? A Thanksgiving party? Because there aren't already enough crazy-making days in the school calendar? I'm thinking of getting a list of all the scheduled party days and keeping T home those days. Party days never end well here at home. But. As I flipped through the pile of papers he came home with -- that class must go through a forest a day -- I found an assignment he had completed about "Things I Remember." "Write about a time with a family member that brought out strong feelings in you." All older adopted child families are groaning with me right now. I understand the kids are learning to write descriptively, but we can't ask our kids to think about family and strong feelings without….getting strong feelings. He had to name the famil...

As a runner, I've had this weird ability to set a desired pace per lap/kilometer/mile -- whatever event I'm running, whether in training or a race -- in my mind and nail it. Back in my competitive days, when I was doing regular interval training with the guys, they loved it when it was my turn to lead the next 200 or 400 or 800 or 1000, because they knew I'd come through the splits within one second of target time. Just call me a human stopwatch. I'm no longer competitive, and we now run on a weird excuse for a track -- a certain university with a regularly losing football team decided to rip up a world class indoor track in order to give the football team an 80-yard practice field. It's maybe 257.7 meters per lap -- who knows -- it doesn't matter since whatever the distance it is, it's not something you can put into a pace calculator and figure out what your times need to be, and there's no checking at the first 100 meter mark to make sure you're ...

I think my head might might explode. Two years ago, my son -- then in kindergarten -- came home with an assignment for Veteran's Day to write the name of an active or veteran serviceperson in our child's family on a star and then send the star back in to school. At that time, I contacted the principal, requested sensitivity to non-traditional and immigrant families, and asked if the assignment wording could be changed to be inclusive by adding "your child's family, family friend, or neighbor." She told me I was being insensitive to the children who have parents currently deployed. Um, not sure how she got that out of that. I assure d her I was not, I was just trying to ensure that children who come here from different countries or who don't know their family backgrounds don't feel excluded.  She told me that if I felt the assignment didn't fit our situation, to feel free to change it. My head almost exploded then.  Here's the point: the minu...

A bit blurry, but he was moving . Two years ago, Hubs paced T to a single-year age course record of 40:18 for male, age five in our community's Festival of Races 5km men's race. That was actually three minutes slower than what he'd run on the Cape over the summer, but he ran it in a monsoon and while fighting a cold. Last year he was poised to set the record for male, age six, but was diagnosed with pneumonia five days before race day, and the doctor said a 100 meter race would be okay, but not 3.1 miles. So Josh A. got to retain his record, which is a respectable one. This year, T was adamant that he did not want to run this race. So I signed myself up. I'm trying to retain some amount of triathlon fitness, and regular racing is going to be an incentive to get myself out the door twice a week to run. Training with him along has not gone well. He crabs, moans, complains, drags his feet, tries to outdo me by walking fast -- an incentive for me to move fast...

Wright Peak's summit knob, overlooking Heart Lake and Mt. Jo --  look how tiny! -- and mountains beyond mountains all around. We left off with us making a spur of the moment decision to ascend Wright Peak instead of our planned stroll into Marcy Dam -- without any additional food, water, or "be prepared to spend an unexpected night out in the woods" gear. Wright peak and Marcy Dam share the same path for the first nine-tenths of a mile, then the trail to the McIntyre range -- Wright/Algonquin/Boundary/Iroquois -- splits off to the right. And the climbing begins. At first it is no more difficult than Mt. Jo. My confidence perks up. I've heard about how big the boulders are on this trail, but since it was snow covered when I went up Algonquin, I don't really know what to expect. We make decent progress and again, Bearie is the one asking for breaks, so I don't have to. I'm more than happy to stop and take a breather and a few sips from m...

NOTE: If you haven't read the prologue to this post, I highly recommend reading that first by clicking here. We spend Day Six of our 2012 Lake Placid, New York vacation mostly resting up and trying to decide what our final hike will be on Day Seven. I had planned on the traditional hike into Marcy Dam, since a walk through the woods to eat lunch at Marcy Lake is a pleasant way to end a week of nearly daily physical exertion. And I had not counted on being able to hike a high peak this trip due to my knees and lack of training. But Mt. Jo had been such an easy walk, I'd decided that Cascade, the easiest of the high peaks just might be within my abilities. A stretch, maybe, and I could be very well biting off more than my knees could chew, but I feel mostly confident. My biggest worry is knowing that the last time I'd hiked up Cascade it was a cloudy day and the fear of heights that kicks in on large, open ascents was kept at bay by not being able to see or sense the ope...

I didn't shed a tear on the first day of Pre-K. I was dry eyed as he got on the bus for kindergarten. No tissues needed for first grade or second grade either. But I try to put his set of Snap Snap books into a bag destined for Hub's cousin's son and the floodgates open. You see, I was relieved to be able to send  T to school. The memories I have of his first years here are mostly of conflict. Both he and I lost out on his early childhood. He was one.angry.boy. We had few positive interactions. Life was a constant battle. He'd wake up sunny and happy. Hubs and I would take bets on how long it would last. Generally less than two minutes. And why should he have been happy? Being here with us in this family was not his choice.  But I just could not handle the constant-ness of our battles. Nothing was ever right. He fought me at every chance over everything. Him spending eight hours at school and daycare gave me the time I needed to be able to be a halfway decen...

This is my swim wave. I'm the short one in the center to the right of the tall woman  with her hands on her hips. The horn is in the air, poised to sound  the start of our race.  We left off with me standing in a lake waiting for the start of my swim wave in my sprint triathlon. This is what I knew standing there: If I make it to the run, I'm golden. My legs know what to do. "My legs are fine/after all, they are mine."  That quote comes from a song I heard on the radio every time I was going to or coming from a workout:  Carry On  by Fun.  (watch the video here) Eventually, the lyrics started sinking in and I realized this was my triathlon theme song. Call me crazy, but I think it might have a bit of an Ethiopian beat to it, once it gets past the intro. " If you're lost and alone (bike ride) Or you're sinking like a stone (the swim) Carry on May the past that you've found Be your feet upon the ground (the run) Car...

When I was about 10 years old, I heard my mother tell a friend of hers, "Oldest Daughter is the athletic one." As the middle daughter, I've spent the rest of my life trying to prove her wrong. Okay, so it took me two years to get out of the beginner's group in swim lessons and I never did pass advanced swimmers, and Big Sis was indeed bigger and stronger than me -- she actually made it through advanced life saving and worked as a life guard and swim instructor. And she could beat up the boys who picked on me -- that was handy. She actually made one cry once. Score. Even though I felt a little sorry for him. But still. To be pigeon-holed as "not athletic." That kind of irked me. Which is probably how I ended up standing nearly hip deep in Oneida Lake in upstate New York on a chilly Sunday morning in early August waiting for the horn to signal the start of my 600 meter swim, followed by a 30 kilometer bike ride, followed by a five kilometer run. I'm ...

I should be writing a post about Trayvon Martin or about how people tell me I should stop seeing the color of my child's skin or maybe about the relative who freely admits to using the N-word, claiming it can't possibly hurt anyone because it's just a word and words are that whole sticks and stones thing. But I'm kind of busy right now. I'm training for another triathlon. A sprint triathlon, but it's got an 18-mile bike ride in it, and that stretches the boundaries of "sprint" in my opinion. I know someone doing a middle distance tri, and that bike ride is only six miles longer. I did a triathlon two years ago, then couldn't last summer because of my knee injuries -- took out both knees by gardening -- that's how it goes post-50. And I think when I signed up for this tri, there was some amnesia about the amount of time that goes into training for one of these things. Baby Sis and me sporting our finisher medals two years ago.   I...