Not A Poser

I had the opportunity to participate in my first yoga class last week.  Little did I know it would cause pain and discomfort the next day…but this has been my experience with yoga poses I have created on my own by accident.  Seriously-if you haven’t done a yoga class I highly recommend it.  I know what you are thinking:  weird music, bending like gumby, a thin instructor who looks like he or she eats too much lettuce, uses no deodorant, and is telling you to breathe so much you pass out from an oxygen high.  Nah.  Well it’s not all true anyway.  My instructor was a tall, thin, perfectly sculpted and beautiful Victoria Secret model.  It’s true.  She comes from a whole family of pretty people that my yetti tribe of Reddicks thought only existed in fairytales.  Thank you, Gina, for facilitating the removal of 35 years worth of built up stress in my shoulders and neck. :)  That being said, below is a story I shared of my own yoga pose I performed during a training run last year…enjoy!    

NOT A POSER...

As many of you know, I’m a runner.  Not particularly competitive but I’m what you’d call dedicated.  It is not about the time and it’s what keeps me grounded in my life.  Well, do I ever have a story to share with you about how running grounded me this morning in a very literal sense.

I woke this morning at 5 a.m.- what I call the crack of dawn (usually I have a specific body part in mind when describing what kind of crack of dawn I’m referring to).  At 5 a.m. and after a few slaps at the snooze button,  I rolled out of bed and managed to stumble out the door with my eyes still very nearly closed.  It was fresh and crisp, the sun wasn’t out yet, and not a cloud in the sky…perfect running conditions.  Of course I didn’t think all of these positive thoughts as I grudgingly belted out the first painful mile-while my feet and lungs yelled at me to go back to bed with every step I took.  But I got into it as I warmed up.  I listened to some Metallica and Nickelback on my iPod and muscled through it (so to speak). 

I hit about 4 miles.  Actually hit it.  In the hills above the beautiful town of East Helena, in a sparsely populated subdivision, I managed to trip over a small rock in the mildly descending dirt road.  I skidded 7 feet in some sort of modified yoga position I’ve watched other people make attempts to replicate after attending classes.  Flat on my stomach, palms down, elbows down, straining to keep my chin up and off of the ground with most my weight on the right side.  I now refer to it as the ‘screeching-to-a halt-tiger-moderately wounded-gazelle’ move.  I hadn’t peeled off my long sleeved shirt as it was still cool out so my right elbow didn’t get too many small rocks lodged in it.  Sadly, my knees and hands weren’t so lucky.  After my body stopped skidding, I rolled over in the street and laid there for a minute and willed my stinging wounds to heal immediately.  I slowly heaved myself onto my feet checking to see if anyone in the area was up at this hour to witness the near fatality.  Wouldn’t you know it, the house I performed my yoga position in front of, the owner was rearranging his sprinkler to water his lawn.  With his mouth slightly open, eyes as big as saucers  and hose in hand, he didn’t seem able to tear his eyes away from the scene of the accident that just unfolded right before him.  Initially I thought maybe he might say something…offer to spray my gravel filled wounds with his hose to remove some of the lead shards and debris from them.  No.  After an awkward moment of silence and gaping, I took off like a maimed, cognitively impaired animal and left him to reflect on the morning’s events.

I managed to get past the joint aches and burning flesh (to add to my experience, I didn’t get enough sun block slathered on for my first golfing expedition yesterday and the road rash was making a nice accent to my ruby red skin) and finished up my 10 miles in a not so fast pace. 

We all have things that knock us down.  Maybe it’s a rock in the road.  A personal struggle.  Maybe you ‘fall off’ the exercise wagon because you just get too overwhelmed.  We all can say we have fallen at one time or another.  I know I can…several times.  And not just physically like this morning.  But you get up.  And boy, is that ever the most painful part of it.  We get up and we start moving.  It’s slow and it hurts real bad.  But we do it. 

Run a faster mile, get homework done, spend time with the kids, eat better, drink more water, exercise a little longer.  Everything can be a challenge.  Some days are tougher than others to will ourselves to get back up when we fall.  We can look at these as opportunities.  I now know what it is like to perform a yoga position as my body is in motion, scraping across a dirt road, with a sunburn.  ;) Yay for me!