True Confession Thursday: Louse-y Week

Let’s have a little talk about honesty.  Yes, honesty.

When a mom says, “I kinda lost it with my kids a bit this afternoon.” [this happened the other day]

Kinda lost it roughly translates to – I locked myself in my bathroom after totally coming unglued.  I want to know why we aren’t really honest with one another?

Because my car NEVER looks like this….

In the spirit of honesty, life hasn’t been a lot of sunshine and rainbows coming out my…well you know where.

There are seasons when parenting is awesome and fun and so deeply fulfilling I can hardly believe that I get the opportunity to do it.  And then you realize your wine glass is empty and someone realizes they forgot to do a project due TOMORROW at 8am.

But seriously, despite the normal ups and downs we’ve had a few things going on with the boys (one in particular) and it’s been challenging to say the least.  The emotional, physical and even spiritual energy suck that has happened has meant a total revamp on life & what I spend time doing.

This all peaked last week when things got pretty louse-y.  It was slightly irritating and really bugged me, but one of the I realized one of the boys didn’t get the “Share hugs, not bugs” memo, the latter part of my entire week meant cleaning, treating lice.  Yes, I too joined the ranks of egg head joining in the infectious fun.

Lice be gone…

I’m not going to nit pick or anything, but cleaning took up all of the spare time we had, so running was off the grid.  Once we were properly deloused and officially lice free, we opted to enjoy a little staycation which included a SURPRISE 10k.

Enter Grunion Run 10k.

A surprise race….shockingly soggy….and a second place sweep.

I don’t look wet but I’m actually soaked.

I’ll spare you details on the pretty standard race other than it was rainy, I ran 45:05 and came in 2nd overall finish for women.  But it was quite the learning experience, which can pretty much be summed up by the spirit of Jock Jams.

Bringing happiness and the running man to my house since 1995.

Let’s Get Ready To Rumble:  Let’s face it, sometimes you walk into a race with your game face prepped and ready to roll.  You do everything right – sleep, diet, training and the race just doesn’t pan out.  Other times you can push through the mile 2 dry heaving (hey, so maybe wine tasting, free champagne at the hotel and a heavy dinner aren’t a great idea the night before a race) and feel great after.  For me, I never know which it’s going to be, so I just always have to be ready to rumble.

It Takes Two (hundred):  While DJ EZ Rock thought it took two to make a thing go right, I found it’s actually 200 for me.  The last few weeks my runs have focused on my cadence [not familiar with this concept, read here].  During this race and  I finally found a number that just felt oh so right: 200.  I’ve typically been running around 170ish thus aggravating my back and jacking everything up the last few years.  But as I’ve slowly increased my cadence I have worked on a shorter stride with a strong mid-foot strike feels oh so right in all the right places and hanging in my happy place around 200.

Whoomp! There It is:  While big, highly organized races are fun and there’s a huge buzz about them, there is something amazing about small, local races.  I love watching the families participate, showing up 15 minutes before the race starts.  Turnout was low because it was raining (note: California breeds weather weenies).

Gonna Make You Sweat:  Nah, not much to say about this other than the fact that it’s STILL my favorite running song decades later when I need a little extra oomph in the middle of a long run or race.

What’s your favorite Jock Jam?

What tune gets your feet shuffling when you run?