For Carrots?

My brother-in-law, Bob, who is also known as, "Uncle Bob", has been a fit guy ever since I've known him.  He comes to visit from time to time and he always makes our house more cheery and fun when he's in town.  He likes to cook, and we like to eat.  We like eating his root vegetable dishes and his soups and, wait a minute, it must be almost time for lunch because I'm thinking an awful lot about food.

At any rate, Uncle Bob has done some things in the past that I couldn't understand, or rather, wrap my head around until recently.  He is a runner and has run marathons before.  When you've never been a runner, the prospect of a thirty minute jog to accomplish the crazy distance of a 5K seems far out of reach.  And pondering running for hours and going, on foot, over twenty-six miles is just unthinkable, un-doable, not possible.  Also, those people must be crazy.

One time Uncle Bob was visiting, he ran over to the park.  This is the park I now love; the park I had lived near for years and never bothered to step one foot into.  I remember that day he went out for a run and came back much later.  I hadn't paid attention to the time until he asked me questions about where the creek was.  "Hold on here, you mean you weren't sure where you were so you just kept running until you recognized where you were?  But that was an hour ago!"

I don't think I said those exact words, but that's what I was thinking.  "He just kept running?  Didn't he run out of energy?  How did he manage to keep going?  Wasn't he worried he would collapse and die out there in the wilderness?"  I didn't understand.  But now I do.  Once you get into a cardiovascular workout, you can just keep plodding on.  It's really quite remarkable.

Another time when Uncle Bob came to visit he did something else I didn't understand.  He was making some soup or stock or some dish and he needed carrots and we were out.  The next thing I know, he's getting out the bicycle to go up the terribly steep hill (or so it seemed to me at the time) to the grocery store.  Didn't he want to take the car?  No, he said biking was fine.  Was this some energy conservation/green thing he was doing?  And all for a few carrots?!!  I don't know what his motivation was, but I think he may have decided pairing shopping with exercising would be a good idea.  And I didn't get it then.

So now that I'm in my mid-life fitness crisis and I'm in much better physical shape—not to mention not being pregnant—the idea of combining exercise with another useful task sounds like a great thing.  Not only that, it's a doable idea.

Yesterday, I was out of stamps.  I had time before I needed to pick up the children so I decided I'd run up to the grocery store to get a book of stamps.  This is that same "unfathomable distance up a gargantuan hill on a bicycle" trip Uncle Bob made some time ago.  It's not an unfathomable distance any more.  It's only two miles each direction.  Even at my slow plodding ten minute per mile pace, that's a maximum forty-five minute trip and less distance than I run most mornings.  Also, I don't mind hills anymore because we regularly run hills.

So off I went, I got the stamps, stopped in and made an appointment to get my hair cut and then ran back down the hill all the way home.  Now I understand and the exercise seems fun, useful and doable.  It took me a few years, but now I know Uncle Bob isn't crazy, he just enjoys exercise and staying in shape, not to mention a good multipurpose activity.

The Big Boy Update:  "Too loud momma!"  I think he has sensitive ears.  That or there is an expectation of reasonable sound volume at school and it's a phrase they regularly use.  If something loud happens (say the blender) he will tell you, "too loud momma."  It's a pity he doesn't police his own volume the same way.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Where did the banana go?  She likes bananas and we give them to her regularly.  Yesterday she tried to get into he high chair before dinner and was wailing rather loudly so we surmised she must be hungry.  I peeled a banana and for the first time didn't cut or break it up.  I just stuck the whole thing on her plate.  She looked at it, picked it up, looked at it some more and then I went off to do other things when she broke off a piece and put it in her mouth.  I turned around two minutes later and the whole banana was gone.

Fitness Update:  Four miles for stamps.  Yesterday I ran for stamps.  This morning it was back to the gym.  We did a half-hour treadmill run to work on our speed and then did some new, tough (and fun) exercises.  If the weather holds out, it's running outdoors tomorrow morning.

Someone Once Said:  An elephant: A mouse built to government specifications.