My 2 ½ year old son, Benjamin, recently moved up to the next classroom at his nursery school, though he had been the second youngest child in his previous class. I like to think they made the move because of his cognitive prowess (which he gets from his mother :-), but in truth he was just too big to hang out with kids his own age; he didn’t fit in the tiny chairs and his feet hung off his cot at nap time. I guess the dominant genes in that “little” boy’s body come from his 6’4” father.
At any rate, a new classroom for Ben means a lot of new things: new teachers, new friends – new germs. Ever since Ben has been in his new class, he has come home with every ailment under the Sun. And like most toddler boys, he is cute, cuddly – and moist. This means that he is a walking virus, and has passed his most recent cold on to me.
I’ve been sick for five days, and this cold has knocked me flat on my – tush. It didn’t help that on my sickest day I was home with both kids since school was cancelled AGAIN (and to the superintendant of Pelham Public Schools, if you close school one more time this winter, I’m dropping my kids off at your house for the day), which left me unable to slip into the NyQuil induced coma that my body so desperately needed. I didn’t work out at all for 6 days; not a single run, yank on a resistance band, nothing.
Any of you who passed high school physics knows that “a body in motion will stay in motion, and a body at rest will stay at rest.” Well, this is how I lived my life as “Fat Girl”; I was a body at rest. I may have run to the supermarket if ice cream was on a 2 for 1 sale, or tackled Wil (the 6’4” husband) if he was on his way to the fridge to grab the last slice of leftover pizza (if there ever were leftovers), but exercise-wise, I didn’t do a thing. For the last few years I’ve tried being a “body in motion”, and the results are much better (and Wil is happy not to be tackled on his way to the kitchen any more). But this past week, in order to let my body rest, I have become completely sedentary again. And the biggest problem I had is that I really didn’t miss exercising at all.
Now “Fat Girl” would have celebrated this newly found love of inertia with a large chocolate milkshake, but “Fit Girl” was regaining some strength under all those germs inside me. So, in an email conversation with Peter K a few days ago, I expressed my concerns of never exercising again. His advice was simple but just what I needed: “Allow yourself to be sick today, run on Sunday.”
This morning (Sunday), I woke up and debated whether I’d do my bands and meet my running partner, or if I’d email her to cancel and crawl back into bed. My first thought was that getting back into an exercise routine was just too hard. But then I remembered something Peter and I had talked about years ago. All this stuff is supposed to be a challenge. If it were easy, I would never have been “Fat Girl” to begin with, but more importantly, I would not have accomplished all the wonderful things I’ve done over the last few years. So, off I went.
I’ll be honest, that run was tough. My running partner only does the first three miles with me, and then I’m on my own. And left with only the other personalities in my head to chat with, going the distance was difficult. “Fat Girl” reminded me of the wonderful brownies I’d made last night, how they were sitting on the counter waiting for me. My legs fought their own battle between muscle memory and muscle atrophy. But “Fit Girl” had come along for the run, too, and in the end all I thought about was how much better running and working out makes me feel, even when my ears are too clogged to hear anything and I’m drowning in my own phlegm.
I finished that run, and I have to say I feel great. A body in motion stays in motion, and challenges are there to remind us of what we are capable of when we put in the effort. Ben will acclimate to the various diseases haunting his new classroom, and I will keep my body moving and conquering any new challenges that come my way.
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