From rat race to jungle: adventures in wonderland

Charting the adventures of a twenty something, leaving the 'better the devil you know' of London, and heading out to rural ayrshire for six months to live with boyfriend, before jetting to central america, for a 4 month expedition in the jungle.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

The Crieff 10km

My neighbour Kim is a very inspiring woman.  She never really took any mat leave with her second baby, continuing to work through as and when her daughter slept and she could get her son excited about a jigsaw puzzle, but she's also been running throughout both her pregnancies and new born baby phases.  So, when she said she was going to do a half marathon and had done a series of 10km races (with her youngest still under 1), I took stock and thought there was no reason why I shouldn't also start running again.  After all, I own a pair of trainers, what's to stop me?!  

So, it was with slight nerves (on my part) that on Sunday we drove to Crieff in Perthshire and all lycra'd up, took part in an incredibly muddy and hilly 10km race where to my delight we were motivated by strapping bag pipers positioned at strategic locations playing haunting pipe music.  Having been on only 2 runs as part of my training (and a long bike ride) and having had a couple of cheeky fags on holiday recently, I wasn't convinced I'd complete the course.  By the 2nd km I was ready to give up, clearly the last runner in the race, no-one behind me even after I'd stopped to stretch for at least 5 minutes.  But I plodded on, and even overtook a couple of people (who then overtook me back later on) and I completed it in just over an hour!  Whoopee woo, I must admit I felt complete euphoria and have got the running bug back.  Forget needing a new pair of jeans, I'm going to get me some new trainers. 

The Ironies of being a mum

In recent days I've realised that the tide has just turned and now that my children are aged 2 and 3, being home with them and working part time has got massive advantages rather than chronic exhaustion-fulled disadvantages. 

It does seem ironic that all mothers have to be the one to take a period of time off work / normal life to look after their newborn babies at the period when newborn babies by nature are completely impossible.  New fathers are probably uniform in their 'I can't do anything, I don't have boobs' approach and leave the work largely to their knarly stressed, exhausted, pissed off, leaking milk squirting other halves.  The men tootle off to work, muttering about a 'report' that has to be in by 9am, and hop onto the train / bus with a latte in hand, swinging their leather valise from the other.  We all know they are DELIGHTED to be out of the house with 9 hours to themselves without the sound of a baby screaming it's head off every 2 hours. 

 But it's so unfair that at 6, 9, 11 or 12 months, just as the mother has decided to to go back to work, babies start to settle down and behave more like the sweet things you see in TV ads.  All gurgly and sweet and smelling like roses and peaches and cream.  But too bad, we have to go back to work and it's the nursery or child minder who gets to enjoy the sweet smelling baby, have cuddles and watch it's flourishing small steps and progress towards major milestones.  

Anyone how has read my past blog posts will know that having worked for, let us just say, someone with limited people skills in a very unsexy industry ("a cherry picker has fallen over, can you do some crisis management on that please before the press gets onto it" etc etc) there was no chance I'd go back to my previous job.  Going on mat leave the first time is in my experience, 60% exhaustion and 40% boredom.  Going on mat leave again within 6 months of coming off mat leave takes the ratio to 90% exhaustion and 10% boredom.  It takes the spark out of what should be rights be a sparky precious time.

But anyhow, I'm through it now - my children are cognisant, verbal, walking, running, jumping, hilariously good humoured, naughty little people, who most importantly of all, completely adore each other.  When I ask them to do something, the older one actually does it.  (The little one runs off screaming with giggles).  If I say I need to count to three, by 1, the older one has stopped whatever he was doing / come to me / done what I had been asking him to do.  The younger one admittedly runs the other way laughing and tries to hide behind the nearest tree/curtains/bed/sofa but I had a major breakthrough this morning when on '1', he stopped and sat still. So, for anyone who is so frustrated with their toddler or baby that they want to call Cry-sis (I got close a good few times) rest assured that it is just a PHASE.  All children go through it and they all come good in the end.  Just rest up and build up a good archive of blackmail photos to use when they turn 14/15 and we descend back into never ending negotiations which are harder to resolve this time around because frankly a toddler will do anything for a lollipop, but I'm not sure it will have the same sway when your son is 6 foot 2.