3/5/2011

Training schedule says I will do: N/A

I actually did: 3.01 miles

Days to go until the marathon: 202

Miles to go until 1000: 975.81

I felt GREAT about my run today.  I was only cold for like the first half mile, and I never felt like I struggled.  It was almost like I was the old, pre-baby me.  It was great!  Oh, and I wore my new polartec running tights, and they totally rock.

Today's run was very thought-provoking, and not just about celebrity break-ups, although I did spend a little time thinking about Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz (sniff).  It all started when Beyonce's "Single Ladies" played on my ipod.  (By the way, I'm pretty sure that's the first time it has played during a run, but it now might be up there in my top 10 favorite running songs.)  I was thinking about my best friend Aubree, and how she wanted her bachelorette party to be called her "he liked it, so he put a ring on it" party.  That got me to thinking about friendship in general.  My husband recently took a 1-month plus hiatus from Facebook because he said it creates false friendships.  I think he's not wrong; since I pretty much don't decline a Facebook friend request from anyone, I have "friends" who I only vaguely remember from high school, and I am pretty sure I wouldn't know them if I saw them on the street.  Those are false friends, I agree.  But I also think Facebook is about more than that.  There are, of course, my good friends on there, with whom I would interact even without any kind of social media.  But then there are a whole group of in between people; people who were in my lives for a short period of time (sorority sisters or someone with whom I did a project in 10th grade English).  These people had left my lives, and I was ok with that, but now that they are back via Facebook, I really enjoy that too.  I wouldn't call that false.  


And furthermore, I think false friendships exist outside Facebook too.  I can think of examples of people who I call friends, but with whom I haven't spoken in I don't even know how long.  If someone were to ask me about them, I could give a fuzzy outline of what their lives are like (Oh, Sally*?  Yeah, she lives in Michigan and has 3 daughters.  She works as a nurse and her husband is named Garth*.  *Sally and Garth don't exist.  Ok, they might, but I don't know them), but that's about it.  All of these people get a yearly Christmas card from me (it pretty much takes an act of Congress to get taken off my Christmas card list), and with some I exchange yearly birthday cards (some have stopped remembering my birthday altogether, and for them I just ignore their birthdays, because I am petty like that.  But I do then feel guilty about "forgetting" their birthday for the next week).  All of these people were very important to me at some stage in my life, but that stage has passed.  It is likely that if we ever found ourselves living in the same town again, we'd be good friends again, although maybe they (or I) have changed so much in the years since we've been good friends, that that's not even true.  I don't know.  But in their current form, are these friendships any more real than the Facebook friends I have?  I know, heavy for a Saturday morning, huh?


The other thing I really thought about on my run was how much I like being a 30-something wife, mom, etc.  I like it for the obvious reasons (I love my husband and kid), but I also like it because I am comfortable with who I am in a way I haven't ever been before.  I recently moved back to my hometown.  This was done mainly so that my son could be around his grandparents, and so that we could raise him in a smaller place than our beloved adopted home of Portland.  As much as I felt (feel) that moving was the right thing to do for my son, I was also a little nervous, because whenever I would come back to visit in the 15 years I was away, part of me would turn into the insecure 16-year-old I once had been.  I was worried that that would happen when I moved back, which would somehow hinder my abilities as a doctor.  Thankfully, neither of these things has happened, and it took the following to make me realize it.  The background here is that I love to sing.  I do so without any vocal talent whatsoever, and I am ok with that.  When I was in high school (i.e. the aforementioned insecure 16-year-old), I would NEVER sing in my car when I was alone, for fear that someone might see me and think I looked stupid.  Today on my run, I heard not one but two songs that I just had to sing out loud (Quarterflash's "Harden my Heart" and Taylor Swift's "You Belong to Me".  Don't judge.), so I did, and I didn't care who saw or heard me.  I don't know if that is necessarily a good thing (mostly for passersby who had the misfortune of hearing me), but I'm ok with it anyway.