Sabbatical Day 3

I'm back.  I thought maybe I'd be a one-hit wonder on the "blogging" thing but it turns out it may go the way of my middle school diary instead: two entries followed by an 8-month gap.  The difference this time around is a bone stimulating device I'm supposed to use twice a day for 20 minutes at a time.  It cost me $240 (insurance paid over $2000!), so if I cost-per-use the thing, I'm aiming to use it at least 120 times.  Less than $2 per treatment seems justifiable, especially if I utilize the downtime to a) consume a homemade cup of tea over Starbucks, b) learn to speak French via my new Babbel subscription, and c) get over this stress fracture.  I'm at treatment #28 right now.  And no, I'm not tallying myself ... the machine tells you what treatment number you are on when you first power up.   And then it counts down from 20 minutes.  Those are the only two readings you'll ever get from it, which seems lackluster considering the price tag.

Uh oh.  Treatment 28 is over and the girls are both up from naps.  Time for snack (or what is more accurately described as the 4th meal of the day involving planning, prep, serving, enduring, and clean-up.  Feeding 3 kids under 5 is a lot of work).

My First (and Quite Possibly Last) Blog Post Ever

So, my sabbatical started today.  It's not a sabbatical from my primary vocation as stay-at-home-mom to my three kids, ages 4, 2, and 1 (although that does sound kinda nice), but rather from my primary passion of running.  And it's not an elected sabbatical, I should note.  I'm a sub-elite marathoner who fractured my pelvis (inferior pubic ramus, to be precise) training for what would hopefully have been my fastest marathon to date.  It was to be the marathon that would have set me up to qualify for the 2016 Olympic Trials.  I was one workout shy of my goal race.  Ugh.  It hurts to even write about.  More on all of that later, but the point here is that running feels like at the very least a part time job.  It's intense in its own right, but all the more so when added on to the very full time job of raising young children.  Somehow the intensity of it all is the way I find balance.  It's the way I make time for what's important.  The way I feel refreshed when I could be feeling suffocated.  The way I cling to my sanity when life seems entirely too insane to bear.  And now it's gone.

Ah, the drama! It's gone temporarily and for a set amount of time,  hence the concept of a sabbatical.  I WILL come back.  I will come back STRONGER.  I will one day find myself blogging about things like caloric calculations for race nutrition, ferritin levels based on altitude, heart rate training on progression runs, etc. etc.  But for now, I'll battle the depression and the loneliness and the frustration I feel when the thing that has accompanied me through all of life's ups and downs since I was 13 years old is gone.

Back to my sabbatical: much like my friends who have long bucket lists for their paid breaks after years of hard work and commitment (generally to well-paying financial firms or fancy tech companies), here's a snapshot of what I'm hoping to achieve from now through the end of 2014:

• Learn enough basic French to not feel paralyzed in Paris
• Go to Paris
• Invest in culinary instruction (like, more than just buying nicer knives)
• Volunteer (but not with kids ... I need a break from kids)
• Learn to knit (have you SEEN my grandma's homemade Christmas stockings?!)
• Enroll in a history course that really tickles my fancy (yes, Husband, probably something involving Tudor England)
• Spiritual reading, folks (even Mother Teresa experienced the dark night of the soul)
• Meditate (what does this even mean?)
• Spend as much as I possibly can on private Pilates sessions
• Achieve a toned upper body with some measurable proof ("Can I really do 10 chin-ups?" vs. "Can I have arms like Jennifer Anniston?" ... I'm achievement-oriented)
• Take calcium/magnesium/vitamin D regularly
• Commit to daily physical therapy exercises and bone stimulation
• Blog about it all

I have always wanted to blog.  I could say I never had the time, but the truth is I never really felt I had anything worthwhile to say.  A fractured pelvis doesn't change that.  I have nothing more inspiring or witty or instructional or noble to say as I sit here now, hooked up to a (ridiculously expensive, insurance-covered) machine that apparently generates an ultrasonic frequency ideal for stimulating bone growth.  What my broken body has provided though is a newly-formed motive.  I write to process this experience.  To find answers.  To tap into a creative energy that can't currently express itself through racing.  To distract me, yes, but also to evolve.  Hopefully my pubic ramus won't be the only thing growing this year.