Gravel Grinding

I snoozed through my alarm this morning after being up half the night so I missed my run...well sort of...I had planned to ride my short runs this week since "the ankle" is a bit colorful after running last Saturday and Sunday.  After spending all morning at summer school with J & S and then school supply shopping with them in tow I was ready for some out of the house without kiddo time when sweet husband got home.

S & J tire swinging it at Lawrence Community Nursery School, AKA The Little Red Schoolhouse

 I wanted to drop some paperwork off to a friend that lives about a mile away so I headed over to her house first, then out of town on a road that quickly turns to gravel.  I stopped to send gravel grinder husband, he blogs at Pedal Constantly, the picture below.  He was jealous.

Two-ish miles out of town the gravel got really loose. Which was sort of fun on the uphills and a bit scary on the downhills.  Made it two more miles before starting to head back to town since I hadn't brought my light and since I only needed to make up for a 4 mile run.  The sunset was beautiful on the way back into town, so stopped to get a quick picture.   

It wasn't actually as dark as this picture would lead you to believe.

Back to town and up and down my mile long street of rolling hills back to our house.  I have a new appreciation for the 200 miles sweet husband did at the DK200, and maybe a re-invigorated love of gravel roads (I grew up on one and learned to ride my bike on one).

Running the rest of my life. AKA...the kid post

So far this blog has only been about my running...which as an often injured mother runner there hasn't always been much of...or at least not blog worthy.  However, even when I'm not running for runnings sake I'm still running.  Running kids to school, running to get them from school, and lately running to figure out "what's up" with our oldest kiddo J (aka Buddy, sweetheart, or "the big one").  Now let me start by saying that I've suspected something was different about him for years...I'd say from about 1.5 -2 years old.  We knew he was different from some other babies & toddlers but thought he'd grow out of it or that it wasn't a big deal.  I mean everybody has nursing problems, a kid that wakes up SCREAMING (every.single.time) for years, and an infant that would prefer to be alone in his pack and play at daycare than playing with the other kids right (J was in daycare for about a year before I started staying home)??  Oh hindsight...20/20 as always.

Nearly two years later we had kiddo number two and we started to realize just how different two kids could be.  S (aka second Kiddo, pumpkin pie, or "the monitor lizard"), in comparison, was the perfect infant.  He cried when you'd expect him to cry instead of ALL.THE.TIME (seriously if J was awake for 6 hours he cried for at least 4).  He nursed like a champ from day one.  He still didn't sleep all night for two years, but when he did get up it was easy to get him back to sleep instead of being up for hours at a time like I had been with J.  At that time we were getting J services for speech delay which we thought was due to constant fluid in his ears and ear infections.  Once we got him tubes his speech delay cleared up, some of his behaviors cleared up, and he magically slept through the night for the first time ever.  We thought that maybe we had him figured out.  We were wrong.

Pre-school started and he learned a lot.  He loved it, but had a constant problem focusing and keeping his hands to himself.  He also refused to do any fine motor work or to get his hands messy, but since we was making big strides in other areas we never suspected anything additional was up.  I remember saying, "he'll get there one of these years".

When he started Kindergarten I knew he was behind in a few areas (socialization & fine motor skills), but figured he'd even out and be okay.  As the year went on I realized I was very, very wrong.  At some point the school OT (occupational therapist) was brought in and mentioned "motor planning delays".  I did some googling.  I found out that there was a reason my kid didn't like getting his hands messy (to the point of he MUST wash his hands or he will meltdown).  A reason he ran, and ran, and ran all day without seeming to be able to stop.  A reason he needed to be coached on how to talk nicely and appropriately to other people.  A reason he couldn't get to sleep.  A reason he screamed all the time as a baby.  A reason he couldn't write his name, tie his shoes, ride a bike, or fasten a button at 5 years old. After an evaluation with a private OT we confirmed it. He has sensory processing disorder (his brain and nervous system do not communicate well with each other) and developmental dyspraxia (his limbs don't always do what he wants them to do when he wants them to do it and due to low muscle tone he gets tired quickly). As I understand it dyspraxia is technically a subdivision of SPD under SBMD (sensory based motor disorders).

If it was so bad why didn't we figure it out before??  From the outside looking in I imagine it was easier to see, since we found out we've had people coming out of the woodwork telling us they just *knew* something was wrong with him or maybe we didn't want to see.  Mostly I think we just had no clue what SPD and Dyspraxia were.  I'd read every symptom list I knew to look at (ADD, ADHD, Autism Spectrum, etc.)  if it was plausible and I'd heard of it I read the symptom list.  The problem was that they didn't fit enough for to warrant further investigation.  I dearly wish I'd heard of SPD &/or Dyspraxia earlier in his life, but as I can't fix that now I feel strongly that my job is to help spread the word about it.  If I can save one parent one day of worry about their kid then I will have done my job.

Further information about SPD & Dyspraxia can be found at the links below.

Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD)

Dyspraxia


Why did this happen?  We don't know.  As far as we can tell we had none of the typical precursors for this.  Healthy pregnancy, normal delivery, full term baby. He was pretty jaundiced, but didn't require the billi-lights.

Will he ever "grow out of it" or be "normal"?  I'm not even sure what normal means anymore.  Is anybody actually normal??  If you mean will he ever be nuero-typical, as in will his brain re-grow those missing or malformed neurons, then no.  SPD and Dyspraxia are life long conditions.  There are things we can do to help him and there are "work arounds" we can teach him so that the world will be easier for him, but no he will never be neuro-typical and you know what?  That's okay, because he is AMAZING just the way he is and, if you ask me, the world do with a little more amazing.

What do we do now?  He'll start OT & first grade in August.  He'll also go to see a sensory motor eye doctor since his eyes don't track correctly which is leading to trouble reading (he can sound out words with the best of them, but putting together sentences is difficult when your eyes can't follow the whole sentence).  I can only hope that with more knowledge, some intervention, and some prodding on my part that 1st grade will be better for him than Kindergarten was. If not....I'm not sure what we'll do, but we'll figure it out when we get there.

As the proud Mama that I am I have to show them off....here's my determined, amazing kiddos.  J in blue, S in "monitor lizard" green.

Photo by Meryl Carver at My Bit of Earth. 

Summer = Getting up Early

Summer arrived in Kansas...and while I've been in the basement on the treadmill happily for a month or so a dear friend reminded that Flat Rock isn't run on a treadmill so I'd better get my behind outside if I didn't want to kill myself on that trail.  Thanks to her gentle prodding and her agreeing to check in and see if I actually got up early I started doing 5AM runs this week.  Thanks dear friend!!

Monday was an uneventful 3 miler with a beautiful sunrise over my sleepy little town.

Wednesday was slightly more eventful 3.5 miler with another beautiful sunrise as a reward for getting up and for not giving up...even when I fell and scraped up my leg (watch your step when climbing rock stairs people).  Thankfully it seems that I managed to NOT fully injure myself (Knock on wood), and as Story Hawk likes to tell me at least I had some practice falling and not giving up.

My homepage ticker is taunting me with it's countdown to Flat Rock so I hope to keep the 5AM run routine until September. Now to add in the 5AM strength routine and I might actually survive 15-16 miles on the Flat Rock trail.

Lunar Trek 10k RR

The drive to Scandia, KS (a 3.5 hr trip for me) was uneventful except for the rain storms I drove through on the way there. The upside to driving through storms was that it cooled off by about 20 degrees in a bout 5 miles. Since it had been 100+ degrees all day I had no hard feelings about the drop in temperature. I got to the highschool a bit earlier than I thought I would and went inside to get my packet. Once I had my packet and had checked out the race map (which was hand drawn BTW) the race people informed me that I could use the highschools showers after my race. I think my face said everything for me as I was transported back to a time of mandatory after gym showers....ummm...no thank you....No Thank You EVER AGAIN. 

I went back out to wait for Mish who I knew from text messaging was about an hour behind me. I ate a Pb&J since I hadn't eaten dinner yet and talked to a gal doing the 100k. She was there on the 100k from Michigan. She was training for Leadville. THE LEADVILLE 100. I think I geeked out a little. In the meantime a guy pulled in with a trailhawks (my local trail runner group) sticker on his truck, so I talked to him a bit about who all was coming out for the run. He informed me that our "fearless leader" Gary would be joining us that night as well, he was doing the 50K. YAY! Two people I know and get to watch come in on a race distance I would love to do someday. 

After Mish arrived we talked about who was doing what and when we (her husband Rick and I) would meet her. We stared at the handdrawn map a bit more and tried to decide the best way to meet her at the halfway point. We were told that a lot of the roads were too muddy to drive on thanks to the recent rain so we would have to drive the course to get there.

We went back outside, chatted, took some pics, and sat around waiting for the start. At some point people started heading around to the other side of the school so we followed. SURPRISE! The rest of the field of runners was there. I was shocked as I didn't think there'd been that many people in and out of the school while we were standing there. Anyway, they shot off a firework and the race was off...faster than I'd like as usual, but the first part was all downhill. I was in the back and wasn't really running with anybody so I tried to slow up a bit and run my own race...especially since I'm STILL babying the ankle I twisted back in November and my longest run before this 10k was a 4 miler that was mainly walked. 

So down the hill, around the corner, and right back up a hill...I'm cursing already at whoever laid out the course. Up the hill trying not to walk, but knowing I probably should. About half way up I slow to a walk. The next couple of miles consisted of rolling hills on wet mostly sand roads, so I ran down the hills and walked all the ups. At one point under a trestle bridge I noticed that I could see my breath, but thought I was seeing things (There's no way I could be seeing my breathe in 80ish degree weather right?) I hit the aide station and headed straight through as there were a couple of girls in front of me that I wanted to pass since we'd been leapfrogging for the last 2ish miles. At the turnaround for the 10k I gave the gatekeeper my number and managed to pass the gals and keep going. The middle section for me was just kind of blah. Not feeling bad, but tired (it was midnight afterall), and just kind of I want to be done. Back to the aide station filled my waterbottle and took off before the gals following me made it in. Back to the trestle bridge I realized I was actually seeing my breath...so bizarre. Managed to stay ahead of the gals all the way back to the turn up into the school. That last hill into the parking lot of the school was far too steep and I walked it while they ran it. I managed a weak "great job" ladies as they passed and ran the flat section around the school and across the finish line with them. 

Time: 1.28...something. 10 min slower than my road 10k time. Not awful considering my lack of running and training prior to this race. 

Overall it was a great time (the 3hr drive home on next to no sleep...not so much). Not a great race on my part but I'm glad I went and I'm really glad I helped to crew Mish in her 50k. I now know what I need to do to crew her for her 50 miler, and it will be so much fun.