Monthly Archives: June 2013

5K Happiness

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I did it!  I finally did it! I ran in a 5K on Saturday, June 8th. It was the first one ever, in my entire life. When I say “ran”, I actually mean ran and walked, alternating. I could not run the entire way. I couldn’t even run the first mile the entire way, But alternating walking and running, I was able to do the 5K.

It was a beautiful sunny day, and the 5K started at 8:00 a.m. so it was still cool out, although once I started to run, I quickly heated up. I just knew that I wanted to do a 5K, and so I found a way to get the first one under my belt. What helped was that when I signed up, the website said “walkers are welcome.”   And I knew this was the 5K for me.

I haven’t really had time to train or anything. I think I was actually in better shape in the fall, when I had worked up to running for probably close to a mile without stopping to walk. But then the weather got cold, and stayed cold until pretty much recently. I went out only on the weekends to run/walk for maybe 4 times this Spring. That was the extent of my training this year.

Since they have clocks at each mile, I learned that I do about a 12-minute mile. Not the best time ever, but, it’s somewhere to start!  I ran the 5K in 38 minutes. I honestly believed that I would be the last person to finish. I was really surprised when I realized there were still some people behind me.

I had imagined everyone passing me up, and so I kept looking far ahead to make sure I knew where to turn, etc because I was afraid I’d lose my way when everyone passed me. Luckily, that didn’t happen and I noticed other people alternate running and walking as well.

There was one girl that I pretty much kept pace with. She’d usually be a little ahead of me, either walking or running, then I’d pass her and I’d be a little bit ahead of her, and then she’d pass me again, etc. Towards the end I lost track of her, but I think we pretty much kept up the same pace through the race.

Then I happened upon a mother and daughter who were running together. The daughter was about 10 and she was crying, I think she wanted to stop and rest but the mom told her to keep running. They ran like that for a while, with the poor girl sobbing and the mother calmly saying, you have to keep running. Finally, they took a break and walked for a while. I really identified with the daughter, because I felt like I wouldn’t be able to keep going either!

Other times I felt tougher, if not stronger. I gave myself a pep talk. Ok, so I can’t run this whole way, but I definitely know I can walk what I can’t run. So I definitely have enough stamina to finish. I will get there (the finish line) it’s only a matter of how quickly or slowly.

About 2 blocks away from the finish line, someone had put speakers in front of their house playing the theme song from Chariots of Fire. I felt so triumphant running past their house! But the biggest triumph was when I crossed the finish line.

And so now I have a 5K under my belt. I have that one piece of confidence that I didn’t have before. This will help when doing the next one. Hopefully I will get more training in (now that the weather is nice), and when I do the next 5K, I’ll know for sure that hey, I’ve done this before, I know what it took and I can do it again. And there will be all the fun of trying to improve my time, etc. And I can have conversations with runners now. My time? Oh yes, I have a time now!  I do a 12-minute mile. It may not be impressive, but now at least I have one.

 

Meditation

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We went on vacation last week and of course I needed to purchase a few books for the long plane ride. I’m always looking for an excuse to acquire more books!  Here is one that I bought:

Awakening the Luminous Mind by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche: This book is about Tibetan Meditation. It comes with a CD for meditation. It is a really wonderful book on how to find “space” by meditating. This space is bigger than all the conflicts and/or hurts that we may experience in life and so finding this space through meditation brings peace.

I haven’t yet finished reading the book. It’s the type of book where you have to read a little bit and then think about it and then later read some more. You can’t just read it cover to cover straight through. One of the subjects it touches on concerns one of the biggest fears of all which is the fear of death.  I feel like it helped me nibble away just a little bit at the subject. It’s a subject I never wanted to think about and I guess I thought that somehow I’d just live forever and never have to deal with it. And I was so fortunate that I never had close loved ones that died. So it was easy to not think about it other than that it was some scary subject out there, far away.

But being in my mid-forties, I guess it’s time to at least start thinking about the topic to figure out some type of way of thinking of it. None of us will live forever. So it’s worth taking time to think about the subject and to wonder how anyone anywhere can ever come to terms with it.

While reading and learning about the concepts presented in the book, it seemed that the author was saying that not wanting to die has something to do with the “ego” portion of our mind and that “ego” is not part of our true selves or the essance of who we are. From the way I understood the book, “ego” is the part of our mind that wants something – recognition, power, etc., but it’s not who we actually are. There can sometimes be a negative connotation to the word “ego.”

Of course, we all have a survival instinct and that is good and healthy but on some level or at some point, we have to come to an acceptance of death because we are not immortal. None of us will live forever, and at some point, each of our lives will end. It’s part of the natural order of the universe.

That’s not to say that it isn’t tragic when someone dies prematurely but I’m just saying that no one can live forever. So I guess that the first part of accepting that death is a part of life is realizing or recognizing the ego piece of our wish to never die. I can understand this on an intellectual level, but I don’t feel it. But chipping away at the subject will hopefully bring me closer in time to an understanding of death as a part of life.