Women hardly ever get to feel strong. I have been lifting weights for about 3 to 4 times a week for 2 months now and it shows, finally. I absolutely love going to the gym for weigths. Lately, due to scheduling issues I go mostly in the evenings and find that tons of 20-year-olds hang there at nightnot necesarily to work out either. It's a 24-hour gym and once there, it's nice to know there is no rush to finish,time is lost. I don't do free weights. I know how to use free weights; I'm selft-taught and many, many times in the past I've done free weights from home, but I prefer the machines for now. Plus, at the gym there are only two benches which are usually taken up for 10 minutes at a time, so, that would not be an option anyway. Something odd about looking at yourself in a mirror while working out around 20-30 people, I'm not there yet. Also, working out at home is never an option. Most moms would understand; who wants to relax in a place you are likely to be asked for a sandwich?
Weight are one thing, but I stopped doing my runs at the gym. I use to watch whole movies as I ran on that treadmill, I find that I can no longer do this...for now. I know during the fall and winter I was doing ALL my long runs, as long as 20 to 22 miles at the gym, but I am totally burned out on that option. I am very much enjoying doing my runs outdoors, super early, before the sun comes up or in the early evening, soon after the sun has gone down.
Come June, I need to start long and longer runs to get ready for MCM again. As much as I am looking forward to more formal training runs, I am also enjoying the off-season, so relaxing. I have to confess, I am not really pumped up for the MCM as I have been in the past. This will be my 4th MCM, after the 5th I can get in any year so this race is working towards that goal of 5 mcm's, yet, I am not looking forward to the hurried nature of a huge race anymore. I feel I am emotionally transitioning to loving the ultra community more and more and may need to start doing 50K's just to be able to do trail races. Something about those races that feels much more like my tribe. Being surrounded by amazing, yet, super humble and supportive people really makes me love life even more and there is nothing else like it.
Which brings me to my goal of getting faster to the forefront. I need to start getting a bit faster if I want to do some of these races. I need to start working on speed, even if it's only once every 2 weeks. I must confess I hate, hate, hate speed work, I even hate hills, and I despise making my workouts super structured, totally. not. my. style. I know I am a workout rebel so I will continue to train as I please, listening only to my body and not giving up, anything beyond that, I cannot make any promises. Running is between my head and my body and for right now speed runs are a huge NO, regardless of how much I need to be getting faster.......I may change my mind later, but that's the beauty of being your own master, you get to choose.
I have been reflecting a lot lately about body size and how women try so hard to be as diminutive as possible and are always working at getting smaller and smaller and smaller...and in essence, we strive to take up less and less room on this planet and how that very aim strongly shapes how we see ourselves and how we see our roles in the world.
I have seen and experienced a lot of couples in the past few months and have noticed an interesting trend. The women and men are often drastically different in size. Often, you will see a man 6 foot plus, sometimes even grossly overweight, paired with a woman sized at basically nothing. This may sound like I am making light of it, but I am a visual person, contrast calls to me when I see it. One might think all women strive to be size nothing, yet, in the past 10-12 months I have been exploring what it's like to take up space, like these men, and more importantly trying to see how aiming at taking up space changes my behavior. I have been steadily going to the gym and lifting weights for about a year now and I have had to buy new bras to accommodate for my bigger chest. These new purchases were tough. Buying bigger clothes felt like a failure, it went against everything I have been taught to be as a woman in modern society, in modern society women don't strive to be bigger, that strive to be smaller, so this whole buying experience was not pleasant or easy. Yet, the bigger, more muscular body opened new doors for me in how I interacted with others, in my confidence and even as something as simple as my stance. Suddenly, despite all I kept hearing, it was okay to feel right in my body and this was so thrilling, so new, so powerful. And if you are a women reading this, we all know how it feels to inhabit our body and yet feel like we are constantly on display for others; that is just how society brought us up to think of ourselves, sadly.
So the reflection continues. Daily, I strive to own the space I occupy and own my actions, my movement and drop the self-consciousness we've all grown to carry at all times. I have observed men and how they live free of such constant and caged thoughts and I want a piece of that, I want to be like that. I want to move around my space with confidence and comfort and own every moment, every space. But as I gain confidence in myself I see how my new-gained demeanor gives off an aura of non-approachability. I now know what my single friend complain about in the current dating world; one in which a confident woman has less chances of finding a partner, for she often scares away potential suitors with an unfamiliar characteristic most men have not been trained to work with, that being confidence. This, reveals an interesting societal chemistry among men and woman, one in which size, confidence and control all play part of the same dance. I am not a number gal, but surely there must exist some universal formula out there in which these three factors all affect each other in fascinating ways, ways we may never clearly know.
What I do know though is that I am on the right track to freedom from these societal messages of which we have all been programed. I take up room in so many ways, with my movements, with my body, with my words. I take up room with my movements by running where I want, at whatever times I want, and in whatever weather I please. I take up space with my body by freely chasing my athletic dreams despite not looking like traditional athletes, I take up room in my desires for my life by fanning the flames of my dreams and daily, chiseling towards them. I take up room with my opinions and my words, always fearless and full of conviction, in all actions.
***Do you feel there is a connection between how we are taught to strive for small and societal control over women overall?
Today I feel a lot better than I had in the past few weeks after having run several miles. I am starting to suspect that the main cause of my pain was made worse by my old sneakers. I guess my plan of turning my sneakers into minimalist sneakers by simply not buying new ones ever is not quite working. Yesterday, for my run, I used another pair (Brooks Pure Connect3) and voila! pain over. 
I am trying not to celebrate quite yet. Tomorrow is day 7 of my 1st week of marathon training and it's a five miler. If after THAT run I feel okay-ish THEN I will celebrate. But now I am still cautious about calling myself healed. In the meantime, I have an MRI appointment in a month for this issue. Hopefully it will be fully resolved by then. But one day at a time. Right now I am just trying to focus on making tomorrow's treadmill run successful.
Today I did weights at the gym. For the first time it occurred to me that the one most significant gift I've received from this injury has been my new awareness of other forms of exercise, such as weightlifting, uphill walking, swimming and of course, the dreaded elliptical. Nevertheless, I LOVE weightlifting so much that I will continue to do it even when I'm fully healed.
Here is the 16-week plan I am following for marathon #7, The Marine Corps Marathon in October 2016. Yes, I know, it's a one 20-miler marathon training plan. With all that's on my plate this fall, from extra after-school classes to working on getting Nationally Certified; I am not trying to even PR, just trying to finish. I am also looking into possibly doing a flat 50K race in December somewhere south of the DC area.
