A well-heeled girl hits a low point

I've been having a low week. A very low week. I've felt flat. And my emotions have been constantly flip-flopping. I know what I need to elevate my mood; what I need to give myself a boost.
But I can't have them. Not yet.
My bad week started on Sunday when I met up with some girlfriends to go for a run. We met at one of their houses on a quiet, countryside road off Highway 15 in the city's east end.I was feeling good. It had rained the night before and the air felt damp and cool. My asthmatic lungs felt free. Breathe in. Breathe out.
I was so happy to be running and so happy to be chatting with my girlfriends, whom I don't get to see often.
And then - thud.
I had been running (and chatting) when my left foot hit the road's soft shoulder and I went down.
My left knee smacked loose gravel and my left hand automatically went down too to try and keep the rest of my body from tumbling. I heard my friend ask if I was OK.
Scraped hand. Dirt on my legs. Is that blood on my knee? Is that a piece of rock embedded in my hand? Wait, is that a second splotch of blood on my knee? I'm bleeding? From running?
Instead of having a motor mouth, I should have just been motoring and I wouldn't have fallen.
My pride kept me from stopping. I shook it off and kept going - another 9.5 kilometres in about an hour.
It wasn't until I finished the run and I was driving home that I realized it wasn't my knee or hand that was sore. It was my ankle.
When I got home, I limped into my house. Even when I've had low self-esteem, I've always, as silly as it sounds, loved my small ankles. No cankles here. (Dad: a cankle is when your calf doesn't taper at the ankle. Your leg looks like one long log. (Calf + ankle = cankle.)
But today, my plum-sized ankle had swollen to the size of an apple.
My husband ordered me to RICE it - rest, ice, compression and elevation.
(Did he forget we have an non-stop 22-month-old? I haven't had rest in two years. And I use all of our ice for my Diet Cokes. Compression? Decompression would be good. And elevation? Yes! That one I can definitely do if I can do it with shoes.)
I will always happily put on a pair of high-heel shoes to make myself feel better. Red patent-leather heels have chameleon-like powers. They can make you feel like a sophisticated lady or a sex machine.
"You know, Sarah," my husband said, while examining my ankle, "you're going to have to wear flat shoes to work tomorrow."
Not once, in nine years, have I worn flat shoes to work. Even when I was nine months pregnant, I wore my four-inch high heels every day (that's my wedding-day, high-heeled, happy foot in the photo above). And now, because of one fall, I have to wear flat shoes to work? Every day this week I had to wear running shoes or flip-flops.
I'm only five-foot-four (and a bit) and though I'm not now, I've been overweight - almost 50 pounds heavier sometimes - so heels have played an important role in my life.
Heels make you taller. When you look taller, you look leaner. And pointy-toed shoes elongate your body. Stacy London I'm not, but I've learned the tricks to make clothing slimming.
Am I shallow and insecure because I've let my footwear dictate my mood my all week? I don't think so. Some women get their confidence from dolling themselves up with makeup; some women like to accessorize with purses; some women love jewelry. I'm head over heels for high heels.
Don't understand the power of a heel? Spend a day walking in my shoes and you'll see.
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Chivalry Alive and Well in Kingston

So, a few of us mommies ran 15 kilometres on Sunday just for the heck of it.

But this blog is not all about me, as my biggest fan/anonymous poster will be relieved. (But seriously, you're still reading this every day. Why, I ask? Why?)

After our run, we returned to the parking lot where we'd left our cars. Our legs hurt. Our bodies were tired. Our minds were relieved the route had come to an end and we were all dreaming about what we'd eat for lunch. And I was dreaming about air conditioning because it was dang hot on Sunday.

Then, one of the runners realized she locked her keys in the car.

Her back window and her sunroof were open a little and we could see her keys on the passenger seat.

Oh no! What were us helpless ladies to do?

I ran (yes, I actually put my sore legs back in motion and ran - tho it was just across the street) to a bar and asked for a coat hanger while the other girls found down a man who, luck was obviously on our side, worked as a taxi driver in Montreal.

Not only did the bar give me the coat hanger, they gave me a guy to come over and demonstrate how to retrieve the keys.

A plan was devised. The coat hanger was stretched out so that the boys could pull a MacGyver and hook the keys onto the coat hanger. Then, they'd lift them up, ever so gently, and pull them out the open window.

All this manly man work drew two more men who wanted to come over and help/gawk and by the time we were done and had the keys back, we had four men, one coat hanger, and a firecracker to help us get the keys. (Don't ask about the firecracker. We really would've needed Richard Dean Anderson for that.)

The guys smiled, went back to what they were doing, and we were free to go home to our families and honeys.

I'm feeling optimistic. These were nice guys. Maybe there are nice guys left in the world because, let me put it to you this way: we were looking hot, not HOT so they obviously weren't doing it cause we were all dolled up, looking like we were interested, or something.

So thank you, gentlemen. Chivalry isn't dead.

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Yeah, I beat him

Every single year around March, I start to say that I'm going to run Kingston's Beat Beethoven race, a fundraiser for the Kingston Symphony.

The race is an eight-kilometre run through the city's street with the goal of making it to the finish before the symphony finishes playing a selection of his music.

You've got to make it in less than 50 minutes.

I've never tried the run because every year when the run would roll around I'd realize there was no way I could walk it, much less run it.

This year, I've been running since January and I was ready to beat Mr. Ludwig.

Last Sunday was blistering hot. We were all sweating before the race started. The Fiance was with our boy so I had to run by myself. I've never run a race alone. When I did the 10-kilometre a couple months ago, I ran with a friend.
This time, it was just me.

I had my heart set on beating Beethoven because I was sure this was the one time in my life when I knew I'd fit enough to actually take him on.

There were 400 runners registered this year. I didn't care if I came last, I just wanted to hear the symphony still playing when I crossed the finish line.

I've been training with Tracie Smith-Beyak since January, running twice a week plus doing two powerwalking sessions a week. We've learned to run downhill and downhill. We've worked on starts. We've worked on dips (I'll let you take one of Tracie's classes to figure that one out.) It was now or never.

I set off on a good pace and kept glancing at my watch to see how I was doing. I was cutting it close, I was sure.

It was so bloody hot that two people near me dropped and had to be helped by medical personnel but I had enough Diet Coke in me to keep me hydrated.

As I neared the finish line on Ontario Street, I was sure the clock said 49 minutes. I had just one minute to run all the way down the street and duck under the clock so I dug deep, all the way to brand new $170 running shoes and sprinted.

I don't know who it was but someone near the end was shouting "You can do it! Push it. Push it real good!" (Um, Ok, that sounds like Salt N' Pepa but you get my drift.)

I ducked under the clock and then threw up in my mouth.

But I made it in 45 minutes - (I mistook 44 for 49 minutes...) - and when you have a baby, you're used to a little barfy barf.




Check out my official stats here.

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Medusa and Me

I'm horribly afraid of snakes. They could give me a heart attack.
My fear is my father's fault. One day, when I was just a little innocent girl, I was in our old stationwagon with my dad at the cottage going to get wood for the fire.
We came to a large woodpile and started throwing logs into the back of the car.
I remember specifically asking: "Daddy, is there any way there could be snakes in these logs?"
"No," he said.
"Of course not."
"Don't be silly."
As we began the drive home, I felt something flutter on my leg. I swatted it away, thinking it was a mosquito. Again, I felt something tickling me. Again, I batted it away. When I felt it a third time though, I took a look.
There was a snake slithering around my feet and trying to climb my leg.
I screamed, my dad almost drove off the road into the lake, and I got out of the car and walked the rest of the way home.
Traumatic, I tell you.
Last week, I was powerwalking with a group of friends. I was heading toward our trainer when she yelled at me to stop. I thought I was just going too speedy. No.
In front of me were four massive charcoal grey snakes. No, they were not pussy garter snakes. These were the thickness of Twinkies and easily the length of a man's belt. The other women saw these devil creatures to verify this. I'm not exaggerating.
When we had to get on the ground later that session to do pushups and situps, I swear I almost fainted. I thought they were going to slither over my neck and get me.
Later that night, I went to a convenience store to buy a lottery ticket so I could win me $30 million. I was standing in line waiting for my turn when I felt like someone was standing too close to me.
I turned around to see just how close this shopper was. He looked normal enough for a young guy. He had dreadlocks, a sleeveless T, Doc Martens and a cute girl on his arm.
But wait - did I mention he had a freakin' snake around his neck?
True story - there was a man in a Kingston convenience store with a pet snake around his neck right behind me and he was sticking his little forked tongue out at me. The snake, not the man.
I almost died. And then I probably would have won the $30 million and not been able to collect it, seeing as I'd be dead.
My mother is ultra superstitious so we all believe things come in threes.
That meant I had another snake sighting to go.
The next day I checked out our front lawn before I got in the car.
Maybe I even checked the toilet to see if a snake was coming up out of our plumbing.
Maybe I even looked under my carseat just to make sure.
But I did see it.
Later that day, in front of me at a red light was a black Impala - and around its licence plate were metallic cobras.
I don't want to know what all these snakes mean. I asked my reverend friend and she didn't think God was out to get me so I'm not too panicked.
The morale of the story is always buy fake firewood.
Just don't get it at your local convenience store.





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No longer have a BF

Did you hear?
I fell off the face of the earth.
Well, that's not totally true. I just fell off the blogging world.

It's sorta like this: Tomatoes have always been my favourite food. I eat them on everything: bagels, potatoes, tacos, eggs, cheese. Then, starting in 2007, I just stopped buying them. All of a sudden they were acidic and just not that tasty.

Back in February, when I stopped blogging, it was beginning to feel like a chore. Family and friends were e-mailing and calling to question why I wasn't writing enough. More! they demanded.

So, of course, I gave them less.

Blogging, for awhile, seemed acidic. It was making me tired and irritable and I just didn't feel like doing it.

Today, for some reason, I felt like typing a tad.

So, I'll give you the quickie update and I promise to give you more in the days to come, OK?

1. Ran my first 10-kilometre race last weekend in 1 hour, 53 seconds. Damn those 53 seconds.

2. Went to the Ontario Newspaper Awards last month. I was nominated for best humour writing for my columns that appear in the Kingston Whig-Standard. Lost to a dad from Guelph who penned a piece on his vasectomy. I'm psychic though. I just knew I was going to lose to him. Still, I got a nice runner-up trophy. And I looked pretty. And looking pretty is all that matters. :)

3. Little Man is the cutest baby in the world. Fact.

4. Thought I was going to win the $38 million Lotto 649 last month. Obviously I didn't.

5. No longer have a BF. Shocking but true.

And, I still don't like tomatoes.

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Run, Sarah, Run!

If you had asked me anytime from 1996 to 2004 - the formative years I was a student at Queen's University and a new reporter at The Kingston Whig-Standard - I would have boasted that I loved smoking and I never regretted indulging in my habit.

I smoked off and on from the time I was 14 years old until the time I was 27.

I quit for good about two and a half years ago.

But when I was a smoker, especially when I was in my young 20s, I'd drive past (because I was a smoker I always drove, never walked) people running in their snazzy leggings and running jackets and would always secretly wish that I could run, too.

I would never have said it out loud but I secretly longed to be able to go back to those days in high school when the insecure part of me chose to take up hardcore smoking instead of pursuing team sports that I'd played all my life. Something in me back then thought it would be much cooler to be a party girl than an athlete.

And I never looked back.

Until my 20s when I lived in Kingston.

The thing about Kingston is that there are bloody runners everywhere. Runners around Queen's. Runners downtown. Runners in Portsmouth Village. Runners on Bath Road. Runners. Runners. Runners.

I tried running once when I was a super smoker. The very athletic ex-boyfriend could attest to the fact that I was a sad sack of poo that day just trying to run around the block. He ran behind me, singing Jennifer Lopez songs, trying to propel my fat ass up the hill. By the time I got home, I was wheezing so hard, I thought my lungs were going to implode or explode - basically disintegrate.

I'd decided over the past few years that I could be a nonsmoker but I was never going to be in shape. I could be a skinny size 10 but in shape? Not going to happen.

Then I got pregnant and gave birth.

Once you give birth - yes, it is miraculous - everything else seems unbelievably easy. Run a half marathon, you say? Hah! Bring it on.

I also decided I wanted the best for my baby and that means eating well and exercising so that when he is five, 10, 15 years old, he will also eat well and exercise. I want him to live the fullest, happiest and healthiest life he can.

I started running in the beginning of January with Tracie Smith-Beyak's Learn to Run group. Her company, Body Now 4 Mums, gets new mommies going - and going hard. We run seven or eight kilometres every week together.

And now the big news: Today, without the support of my running mamas, I took to the streets in Kingston's Twosome 5K race. It was the first time I've ever pinned a number to my chest. It's a high.

I had three goals today:

1) Not to come in last place;
2) To run in less than 35 minutes. Two weeks ago, I ran five kilometres in 36 minutes so I was hoping to shave off a minute;
3) To run, not walk once.

I can proudly say, today was a great day in my life - no, not nearly as exciting as giving birth, but nothing will ever top that. With just half a kilometre to go, I picked up the pace and passed a couple of people. I didn't come last.

I ran a good 33-minute race - two minutes less than I was hoping for.

And, I ran the entire thing.

Sure, I got my butt kicked by 99 per cent of the runners but I still did it.

Today, I was not that out-of-shape smoker staring at the runners from my car.

I was (am) a runner.

Next race: The 10-kilometre run in April.

And then maybe the half marathon this fall.

I know many of you don't actually believe I did it: So click here and check out number 123.

It's the new weight-loss-fitness secret no one has ever written about: Have a baby.

(Thanks, Little Man.)

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