Running into trouble

I'm sorry if you're only here for the pictures of children in boxes, but I have to gab on about running again for a minute. I'll bring it back to the children, I promise.

This morning I went out and I ran a whole mile without stopping. When I came back I told B that it had taken me 15 minutes to run it, and by the way he looked at me I could see that he was wondering how that was physically possible. "I lay down between each step," I added, to reassure him. But after my shower he told me that I'd read the watch wrong (he lets me use his fancy GPS running watch) and my pace had in fact been a much more respectable 12 minutes.

Just to put that in perspsective, his "slow" pace is about a 9-minute mile, and in marathons he's aiming for 7.5 or so. For all 26.2 miles. I will never be running marathons, is what I'm saying, but on the other hand, apparently I didn't lie down between each stride either.

It turns out that my limiting factor is mostly getting a stitch: if that doesn't happen, I can keep going till my legs get tired, which is about a mile as of this morning. I have yet to figure out how to not get a stitch: is it random, has it something to do with fitness, or is it about how much coffee I drank how soon before I left the house?

And I have to get all soap-boxy about it for a second and say that if you can walk, you can run, so you may as well give it a go. It's over sooner, it gets your heart rate going faster, and it makes you think you're the bee's knees. (Bees' knees? How many bees are we talking about here?) But, three words: Buy A Bra. (Unless you're one of my two male readers. Probably, you don't need to. But hey, whatever floats your boat.) Don't think that the one you wear for yoga will do; don't pick up a cheapie in Target or Dunnes Stores; choose a heavy-duty one in the right size, take it into the changing room, and jump up and down a few times. If you bounce, move on until you find the right one, and don't begrudge the money. The difference between running while bouncing and running while being properly reined in is astounding.

So there I was, pootling around the lake this morning - I've decided I need a better word for what I do, because it doesn't yet aspire to running, and a good quantity of it is still walking, but it's walking in a good bra, you know - and thinking why it is that I eschew those app-y things like Couch to 5K that tell you when to run and when to walk and are roundly praised by people like me who start from negative levels of fitness and want to go a bit faster and a bit further without falling down. Basically, it's because I don't like to do what people tell me to. In fact, I am positively motivated to not do what they tell me to.

Ooh, look, once again running (pootling) helps me understand how my children's minds work.

But, historical revisionism, ahoy. My mother says I was never any trouble. How can this be, if I am so programmed for rebellion? Did I develop this characteristic late in life? Or else, 

(a) I was Trouble, but my mother has forgotten
(b) I was Trouble, but my mother didn't find out
or (c) I wasn't any trouble, because my desires meshed with my parents' desires

This last may have been true once I was older and decided it was fun to get good grades - because if there's one thing I hate more than doing what people tell me, it's getting answers wrong. And since I didn't know where the boys lived or how to find them, I had nothing else to do but my homework.

I suspect I was Trouble, but both (a) and (b). Also, it's possible that my mother was more canny than she gives herself credit for, and manouvered me into doing what she wanted me to do while making me think it was my idea.

Or perhaps my parents just left me alone and I turned out okay. Free-range parenting in the eighties? What a concept.