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A few years ago, I went to see my friend Rick Hoyt participate in a half marathon.  He was busy signing autographs (nope, not joking), so while we waited for his time to free up, my family and I perused the merchandise at the athletic expo.

Little Sister was about 3 months old, and after months of partial and complete bed rest, I was a far cry from where I was before I got pregnant with her.  Soft, lumpy, and out of shape, I decided that the best way to kick it up again was to buy some real running clothes.  After all, running is like any other sport–if you’re serious about it, you need the right gear.  So I bought a tank top, 2 pairs of running shorts, and a pair of socks I couldn’t resist.  They were dry weave athletic socks with the figure of a running girl on them.  And, just like any other sport, the right kind of gear doesn’t come cheap, so I went home with my purchases, convinced that the money I just shelled out and the stylish socks would be enough for me to get my butt moving.

It wasn’t.  Not right away, at least.  I would schedule walking dates on and off, and would sometimes meet up with a group that ran on Saturdays, but I never established anything permanent, and certainly nothing that really required my new cothes.  After all, if you’re not serious, a cotton shirt with cotton shorts will do just fine.  And so my girlie socks remained quiet and unused, languishing in the bottom of my disorganized sock drawer.

This past summer, it was confirmed that having another baby would be inadvisable (read: possibly deadly), and I was seized with the same drive I had before I got pregnant with Little Sister–the drive to do something extraordinary with my body before it quit on me.  And so I recruited some women who were as soft as I was, and started training for a half marathon.  The first day out, I wore my tank top, my shorts, and the girlie socks I had bought almost exactly two years before.  Girl power.  I was ready.

Then I lost a sock.

Out of the laundry came one of my socks, all fresh and clean, but the other one was nowhere to be found.  I searched and searched, and finally gave it up as a loss to the sock monster that surely must not only reside in my house.  (Please tell me you have a sock monster too.)  I kept the loner one, though, just in case.  And got more running socks for my birthday.  (That, by the way, is when you know you’re obsessed–when your friends give you socks for your birthday and you get excited about it. And then you blog about it.)

Tonight, as I was rummaging around in my disorganized linen closet, I discovered a lump in one the corner of one of my sheets.  You know how that is–something gets caught in the corner of one of the fitted sheets, and you don’t notice it until later.  Something small, like a pair of your son’s underwear, or your daughter’s tights.

Or a sock.

I pulled it out, and sure enough, it was the match to the loner running sock.  And for some reason, it made me really happy to see it.  I don’t know, it was a like a little message from the universe, like the girls were ready to run with me, now that I’ve proved to them I am serious.

In less than 2 weeks, I’ll be running my first half marathon.  13.1 miles.  And I’m ready for it.  I am.  I have the blisters and sore knees to prove it.  I will be pushing myself past where I’ve ever been, doing something hard with a body that might betray me in a decade, a body that might fail and need some new parts.  But for now, I’m trusting it to do what I’ve been training it to do for the past 4 months.

Like I said, running is like any other sport.  If you’re serious, you need the right gear.  For me, the right gear will include my well worn running shoes, warm, dry weave running pants, and a long sleeve dry weave jacket over a short sleeve  shirt.  And my girlie socks, taking each step with me, reminding me that if you try hard enough, you can push yourself to do great things.

Anybody want to join me?

(If not, anybody want to come help me organize my linen closet?  If I found one sock in there after four months, who knows what else might be lurking….)