Hills and Cheetos and Smiles

If you ever join a running clinic you’ll be introduced to a new fear … hill training.

It’s part of every running clinic, and people talk about the fear of hills pretty much from the moment clinic starts.

Last night … dunh dunh dunh … was hill training.

(admittedly so was last week, but I was sick and the warm up did me in. I don’t even remember the hill part).

Usually clinic nights start out at the local store and then we do a route around the area. It started with a 3k run and progressed to about a 6k route. This week we met at a local park (kind of local. I got lost) with a lot of hills. We did a 20 minute warm-up, ran 4 huge hills, and then did a 20 minute cool-down.

The warm up went well. I enjoyed it. The we got our hill route. There were lots of runners out because another clinic group was training on those same hills. I was walking down the hill with our coach when I realized that everyone running these hills was smiling. SMILING. Call me crazy, but I did not expect that.

Because we were all going at different speeds and setting our paces what you started to see was people almost in lines on either side of hill. What started to happen was that on the walk/slow jog down people were screaming and cheering encouragement to the people running up the other side of the hill. As soon as someone heard the cheers this huge smile would cross their face. At first people were cheering for the group we were familiar with, but as everyone started crossing over, there was more cheering.

Last night I did 4 hills. It was pretty awesome. I thought I’d hate hills. I didn’t. I thought they were awesome. And I can’t tell you whether I preferred cheering on the runners or being cheered when I made it to the top.

It’s funny how these small successes seem monumental lately.

Sometimes I feel like all of this focus on running and yoga keeps me from focusing on other stuff, but I don’t think that’s really true. I was talking about Matt’s school issues. You know, it didn’t get any easier. Every day my 8 year old came home from school sad.

Tuesday night he was downright miserable. He’d had an argument with his best friend at recess, and trust me when I say he looks soooo forward to recess. (it was a typical 8 year old disagreement). Add to that the fact he ate practically nothing all day because he’s not in a routine, and he was a mess.

Now I can’t solve all the problems of the world. I can’t even solve all the problems of my kids. But one thing I can do is comfort food. Tell me all you want about how bad cheetos are, how meatloaf is fattening, how you shouldn’t eat your way out of your issues and that red food dye is evil. BUT, if you ask me, it’s called comfort food for a reason and if my kid isn’t eating I can do comfort food. So, off we walked to the grocery store. We bought cookies, candy, chips and all the ingredients for Matt’s favourite food, meatloaf. Oh – and we talked, about school, about friendships and about the importance of knowing the difference between Lego Star Wars and Lego Star Wars the Clone Wars.  And then I came home and made meatloaf.

And yesterday. School success. I came in to a kid who told me “my day was perfect.” He ate his lunch! There’s a new kid in his class that he likes. He did well on a math quiz. He had amazing recesses.

Maybe a thumbs-up kind of day isn’t always monumental. But right now it’s so necessary. And you know what? I’m going to celebrate the small successes. Because sometimes … they are huger than anything we can ever imagine.