I’m going to start this blog by reminding you that I’m a data analyst. Not only does this mean that I’m ridiculously intelligent :-), but that I’m also extremely organized. My spices are alphabetized in the pantry, the sweaters in my closet are sorted by color, and when I unpack my bag at the gym, I put everything in my locker in the opposite order in which I will need it, so that I don’t have to dig through my stuff to find anything. My husband jokes that he’s waiting for the day that I turn to the kids and say, “OK! The spontaneous fun will begin in 10 minutes!”
Being organized like this has its obvious advantages (need cinnamon in my house? Have no fear; it’s right next to the cilantro), but there are disadvantages as well. It tends to take the fun out of everything. When doing crafts with my kids, flowers I draw always have green stems, and rainbows consistently follow the ROY G. BIV pattern. I look over at my 6 year old daughter’s paper and get momentarily jealous that her flowers are usually purple and blue, and that rainbows are not only completely mixed up, but are drawn to be underwater slides for the mermaids she’s drawn in the middle of her paper. My workouts follow the same routine, my runs take on the same routes. Being this organized is, well, downright boring.
One day I had a coaching session with Peter K. I mentioned that I’ve really been disliking my workouts, and especially my runs. He asked me questions in an attempt to diagnose the problem: how long were they, what time of day, how often, where? I immediately rattled off my training plan that I know by rote for the NYC Half Marathon I have coming up next month. Peter asked me one question: “When is the last time you ran just for fun?” I had no answer. Do something without a purpose? Just because I enjoy it? Really, people do that?
Every since Peter and I have had that conversation, I’ve been thinking about the point he was trying to make. Yes, it’s important to have goals like losing weight and training for half marathons. But I think that what Peter was trying to get at is that the most important reason to do something is for the sheer pleasure of it.
This morning I had a 5 mile run planned. My running partner, Karen, was going to meet me at our usual spot, at our usual time (no, she’s not as tied to routine as much as I am; she’s just very accommodating to my mild case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). We were going to do our three mile loop, and then she was going to run home while I tacked on the extra two miles that I must do because they are part of my training plan.
I put on my usual running outfit, left my house at my usual time, started my stopwatch like I always do, and took my usual route to meet Karen at our regular meeting spot. Karen arrived about a minute after me, and started off by saying, “Alison, I’m really not feeling well. I don’t think I can do the run today.” Our run starts with a hill big enough to be annoying before you’re warmed up, so we climbed that, and when we got to the top, Karen turned to me and said she just couldn’t run today. I told her I hoped she felt better and then we went our separate ways.
I ran a couple of minutes along our normal route, when Peter’s question resonated in my head again: “When is the last time you ran just for fun?” Here I was, with no running partner, and my entire run stretched out in front of me. I took a deep breath, and took one big step – out of my own comfort zone. Then I stopped my stopwatch and just went. I ran. I followed traffic light patterns, turning when a street looked interesting. I remembered a house my husband and I had looked at when we were house hunting, realized I was nearby it and ran past it (and to the owners who outbid us and then painted it that God awful lavender, I hope you’re happy with the color because I’m betting your neighbors aren’t). I ran until my body felt like it was time to head home.
The funniest part of this story is that later I mapped my run, and guess how long it was? 5.3 miles. I guess you just can’t take the “anal” out of “analyst”. The best part, though, was when I got home. My kids are always happy to greet me after a run, mostly because I make the world’s greatest pancakes (oh, please; they are totally healthy, made out of whole wheat flour, oatmeal, wheat germ and fruit. Peter K would feed them to his own kids if I gave him the recipe) and they know those are going to be a part of their very near future. But, they like to ask me questions, like how far I went, did I see anything interesting? Today, when my daughter, Olivia, asked me how my run was, I had the perfect answer: “Fun!”
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