Three Years Since 50th State

When we are stressed we are often anaerobic, holding our breath without knowing it until we get a bit of a reprieve and we exhale then inhale and take in the life giving oxygen. That is what I am experiencing now that I am looking ahead to my retirement. I want to keep moving and interacting and living life to the fullest, but I will insist on pausing to breath.

My friends are mostly younger than me and don't realize that they are moving in a frenzied pace as I did without giving themselves time to inhale. I love the life that I am blessed with, but I wish that I could step back and slow things down a bit. As a young adult I felt as though my mother, teachers, and other adults were always imploring me to hurry up. I felt like a lazy sloth that could not keep up with the pace of becoming an adult. I would drink coffee, Diet Coke, and Diet Mountain Dew to attempt to keep up with the pace of the life that I was living. With these aids I felt better equipped to teach, exercise, parent, house-keep and be the super-wife that would make everyone happy. Being a teacher I had the summers off, but between sports camps, manic vacations on our boat, and summer professional development opportunities I didn't feel that I had the luxury to stop.

As my children left the nest I felt the need to maintain that pace to avoid the emptiness that their independence afforded me. I filled the void with teaching and running. Setting goals for myself to run the 50 United States of America gave me a personal space to commit energy to. I felt selfish, but am wonderfully supported by Gary who still tolerates my frenzied calendar of races. It has been three years since I finished running  a marathon in all of the 50 states. I still am having a hard time ratcheting down to low gear.

In the last 5 years, I have become even more conscious of my health and the health of the planet. I also have been dealing with menopause. To tackle the weight gain and hot flashes I have made some significant health changes.

• Vegan: I have been lactose intolerant since I was pregnant with Stacy who is now 26. So modifying my diet to exclude all dairy except the most aged cheeses was pretty much part of my lifestyle. When Stacy became vegan, she taught me how significant our meat consumption was to the health of the planet. Since then I saw the Discovery Channel's Racing Extinction. They stated that for every person that changes to a vegetable based diet it is like taking 1,000 cars off of the road. This is due to methane production of livestock. 
• Reliv: This vitamin supplement has helped my recovery between races, stopped hot-flashes and reduces brain fog making it's way into my neural networks. 
• Training: I have reduced the number of miles that I run. I get up at least 3 days a week with the sun, or in the winter before the sun comes up, to run with Krista Maline. My weekly mileage ranges from 15-36 miles. I give myself more rest days. 
• Emotional Health: In life I have felt like a plodder trying to amp up my output