3 days, 9 hours, 44 minutes
While everyone else is busy setting goals and making resolutions for 2012, I am still working on a dream from 2011. Maybe it was turning 50 and realizing that some things are sliding into the “now or never” category, but, for whatever reason, I signed up for my very first half marathon. I’ve been a runner since high school - in the early years of Title IX when I ran on the boys cross country team. I’ve done 5Ks and 10Ks. But, I had never tried this distance and had to register in the "50-54" age group.
Ever so slowly, a quarter mile at a time, I began adding mileage and working my way up the distance ladder. My body parts, however, were not so sure. Each run started with aches, creaky old knees that were slow to warm up, IT band issues, complaints from my ankles, shins and an old broken toe. I was whiny. I was cold. I was too hot. My pace was too slow. What was I thinking? But, for most runs, by mile 3, I was in the zone and determined to finish.
I’m old and I'm slow, but I'm still running and down to 3 days, 9 hours, and 44 minutes to the starting gun for the Charleston Marathon. I’ll keep you posted.
AF
***********************************************************
I would like to say I’m a strong, disciplined person, set on following through with my healthy living resolutions. The fact of the matter, alas, is I’m weak. I need incentives, rewards, perks, friends and the like to prod me along. My tumbler, pictured left, was a Christmas splurge for myself. Its purpose is twofold. One it reminds me of lessons learned when I did a 21-day detox diet with a fellow co-worker last year just before Thanksgiving. She is a wonderful cook and a foodie who felt sorry for my uncreative diet and thought this would be a good way to refresh my palate. She was right.
Two, it’s pretty. I like looking at it. The tumbler reminds me of the simple things I can do that can make a big difference. Small investments in health can reap big benefits. One big advantage of the diet is that it retrained my taste buds and got me off my high sugar load. Spiritually, it reminded me that stripping away excesses and getting back to basics always is good for the soul.
DB
***********************************************************************************
I couldn't read his name when I happened upon his tombstone beside the
marsh. There were a half dozen others scattered among the trees,
relocated a few years ago from where they had rested for decades or
centuries before Interstate 526 needed them to make way. I read aloud
the names on those I could decipher. I couldn't say why, except that
I liked the thought of someone hundreds of years from now doing
likewise if she came across my name on an ancient stone. But the top
half of this stone had broken off who knows how long ago. There was
no name to read, only the epitaph. "The latter departed this life the
29th of June 1808 after a long and tedious decline which he endured
with meek resignation to the will of God. Aged 23 years and 8 months."
Questions flooded my mind. Who wrote the epitaph? What was his
illness? Just how long was his decline? Who took care of him? Did
he live his whole life in Charleston? What kind of medical care was
available here in the early 1800s? But most of all what I wondered
about was his "meek resignation to the will of God."
