(Wo)Man in Motion

Sorry about the long silence, internet. When I disappear y'all must worry that I've gone and joined a Siberian nunnery or something. But do not worry. All of us Newts are home and fat and happy, uncommitted to any obscure religious orders.

Mostly I haven't been blogging because there's a, you know a *thing* going on at work that is sucking up a lot of my energy and time. Sorry to be so mysterious, but you know how it's a bad idea to blog about work. So, back to family.

Hmm...hey, so my mom and sister each have one of those Nike ipod chips you put in your shoe so the ipod can track your workouts and record them at a central website, right? They have been doing this for a few years, but I was pregnant and then unpregnant, etc., so I haven't done much running since I think 2006, and even then I was really daggone slow.

So slow, I should note, that I have intentionally refrained from mentioning my runs here on this blog, because some of you who read it are serious real athletes and my puffy little jogs are...well, you know how you can't actually see a glacier move, but scientists will photograph it one summer and then come back the next summer and it's six centimeters lower than it was before? Put that glacier in jogging shorts and that's me. Too slow for human perception, my runs can only be recorded with time-lapse photography.

But then this summer I needed a postpartum workout routine, so I bought my own Nike chip, and my mom and sister and I have been logging all our runs on the website so we can compare our progress. It's a great motivator because slow as I am, I really don't like it when my 59-year-old mother runs faster than I do, baby seven months ago or no baby seven months ago, you know?

So knowing we would get together this August, the three of us agreed to race a 5K during our family reunion. That's right, internet, I have been training all summer to race my mother. Gotta have goals, right?

Surprisingly, we are all just about the same speed. Going into the family reunion, there was less than 20 seconds separating each of our fastest 5K finishing times. Expecting a tight race, I made a special playlist for my pod, the "Ultimate 5K Speed List." I'm not sure why the 80's are such a source of great running music, but right now I'm really loving St. Elmo's Fire. Because, you know, you broke the boy in me but you won't break the man. Stirring stuff.

I'm trying to think of how to make the story of a race exciting, but basically we each put one foot in front of the other and tried not to slow down.

I won, the end.

There's talk of making the Newt family 5K an annual event, so basically I could spend all forseeable summers training to race my mother. That's funny to me no matter how many times I say it. Oh yeah, I'm a badass.