Reality Check

I guess, every once in awhile, that a little reality check is good and necessary to keep one humble.  This past weekend provided two such opportunities for me.

On Friday evening, I went to pick Charlotte up from camp.  I rode along with Anna’s mom, Beth, as both of our husbands were out of pocket that particular evening, and we figured that riding up together was a good plan. 

The girls had had a fabulous time and couldn’t stop chattering about all of the great fun they had experienced over the past week…Capture the Flag, night swimming, prank wars, the mud slide, shoveling mulch, prayer time around the campfire, life lessons.  All in all, Charlotte couldn’t have been more pleased with her week at camp, and I certainly concurred.

However, on the way home, we stopped at Dairy Queen to eat.  First, I forgot to order Jeremy any food, although there was very little there that he was crazy about anyway.  The girls had already eaten supper at camp, so they just wanted ice cream.  As this was DQ, it came out before the rest of the food.

Well, Jeremy took one look at what Charlotte and Anna were eating, and he started screaming for ice cream.  Literally.  The restaurant was packed, as many people were eating there on their way home from camp, and our party was drawing more than a few stares.  I asked Charlotte to give him a couple of bites of her Blizzard, while I tore up some of Elijah’s chicken strips, which had finally been delivered, in an effort to cool the food down.

Beth offered Jeremy one of her French fries, which he took with an ornery expression on his face and promptly threw on the floor.  He did the same with some puffs and then with Elijah’s chicken.  The ONLY thing that he wanted to eat was ice cream.

So, he screamed.

Long ago, before Jeff and I even had kids, a man with five children told us part of his philosophy on raising them.  “My kids don’t have the right to bother other people,” he stated.  “When they start bothering other people, I do something about it.”

This sounded like pretty good advice to us, so we’ve tried to follow it.  And, let me tell you, a 16-month-old screaming at the top of his voice in a restaurant definitely amounts to bothering other people.  As I wasn’t driving and no one, including me, was done eating, I did what any desperate mother does.

I ordered Jeremy a dish of vanilla ice cream and proceeded to give it to him for supper.

Nope.  No mother of the year award for me this time around.

This was a fail on so many levels…giving into a stubborn baby, lack of nutritious food,  fear of what others would think of me and my screaming offspring.

Sigh.

Who would’ve thought that one little child could be so…difficult?  You wouldn’t know it to look at him, would you?

Hrmph.  Never mind.

My second reality check came the next morning.  As I’ve mentioned one or two or a thousand times, I am training for a marathon, and Saturday morning was a 17-miler.  The 15-mile run had been challenging and bit tough from which to recover, but it hadn’t been THAT bad.

On Saturday morning, I hit a run that WAS. THAT.  BAD.

At some level, I knew it was coming.  I’ve talked to plenty of people who have run marathons and read plenty of literature about how physically and mentally demanding the last four to five long runs are.  Seventeen miles is a big deal because you finally move into single digit miles to the finish.

However, knowing how challenging something is and actually experiencing it are two different things, and I was slammed on Saturday with the actual experience.  The first nine miles were fine; the last eight were absolutely miserable.  And eight miles is a long time to feel absolutely miserable.

Of course, by now, I’ve looked at a lot of factors that probably contributed to this difficult run, which, by the way, I did finish without stopping.  The DQ meal the night before wasn’t brilliant, although I did avoid a grease bomb by eating a club toaster sandwich.  I had not consumed enough calories before I started running, either.  Up to this point, a couple of 100-calorie granola bars and two ShotBloks every 40 minutes during the run sufficed.  Not this time.  A 17-mile run burns nearly 2,000 calories, the daily caloric intake for most people.  The temperature also climbed before we finished running at 10:15.

But, at the end of the day, what my marathon-running friend Jess often signs off her emails is true:  “No marathon is easy.  It’s supposed to be hard.  If it weren’t, then everyone would do it.”  (Words of wisdom from Runner’s World contributor Joe Henderson.) 

This past Saturday’s run taught me the truth of that.

So, all I do now is keep on running and prepare myself as best I can for 18 miles this next Saturday.  Then 20 miles after that.  And 22 the following week.  Then, I can only hope that I’m ready to run my race!

Yes, reality checks are good.  Not fun…but definitely good!