I used to be a gymnast.
Sort of.
One of my earliest memories is of attending a gymnastics class when I was 4 or 5 years old that was held at a dimly lit elementary school classroom in Palos Verdes. My sister, Mary, was in the class, too. She was a natural, I was not.
Thankfully, I couldn't find a gymnastics photo, but this is an adorable photo of my sister, Mary, and I circa 1985.
I was the stiffest kid in class by a large margin. I can still see my mini, yet already tall, early 80’s body reaching over my brick-red sweatpants, (I pushed very hard against wearing a leotard), toward my white tube sock covered toes, grunting with 120% effort, then straining my neck to the left to see Mary splayed out effortlessly, “Wha? How does she do that?” I didn’t excel at somersaulting either, in fact my favorite part of each class was the drive home down Hawthorne Blvd. in our navy blue Vanagon, but I did learn the value of humility, (I didn’t mind Mary being better than me), I also learned that I was naturally inflexible.
Fun times at T.R.I Physical Therapy. Photo credit goes to Dr. Alanna Grey.
I still can’t run pain-free. I ran a handful of times last week, and even though the running portion felt amazing, (heavy breathing, long strides, breezy air flow), the creeping pain in my right leg did not. I was disappointed after every run, but not surprised. The only reason my Physical Therapist gave me the thumb’s up to run twenty-thirty minutes every other day was to preserve my mental health, (please see last week’s post), however, the reality is that there are still about nine steps I need to pass before I receive the official “green light” to start running for real.
I am not proud to admit this, but there have been many minutes over the last month that I wished the LA Marathon was cancelled. It just slid under the wire of the worldwide Coronavirus cancellations, which at the time I was naively thrilled about, but I changed my tune in the hours since bumbling over the finish line, consumed by too many nauseating games of “What if?”
What if I just stepped wrong turning right after that steep hill? What if I didn’t start out so fast? What if I didn’t fail most of my workouts leading up to the race? What if I decided to run the race for fun, instead of running it as fast as I could? What if the race was cancelled, would I be able to run pain-free today?
Then last Saturday I woke up. I felt groggy from my right leg “zinging” all night from a mini-run I ran the day before, and finally acknowledged that what if my leg seizing up during the marathon was not a fluke? What if it was simply the breaking point of over three decades of strain and stiffness that I put my body through unnecessarily; everyday compounded by the belief I was born inflexible, when I really just needed to stretch?
So that is how I spend most of my time now. I stretch my legs, stretch my back, stretch my beliefs, stretch my patience, stretch my creativity, and stretch my limits for what is possible once my body limbers up, and the pandemic eases off.
This is how I "swim" now. Please save your notes, I have received plenty from my coach. WIP.:)
I may never return to my gymnast roots, but I am grateful they grounded my humility, gave me the first of many reasons to be amazed by my sister, and challenged me to never let frustration stop me from growing. As it turns out I wasn’t born inflexible, it’s just taken me over forty years to stretch out.
The song and video choice this week is one of Halsey's early hits, a haunting a very cool tune called, Colors.