By David Freeze
The Resolution Run, Treadmills and a Personal Christmas Story
This coming Wednesday, January 1st is the Bradshaw Rogers Financial Partners Resolution Run 5K at The Forum, starting at 9am. Registration is $10 early and $15 on Wednesday, way cheaper than any other event all year. Make a commitment for a year of better health, whether walking or running, and you’ll get a safe course, new shirt, refreshments, plus accurate and posted results. The top 10 males and females get a medal, but there are no age groups. Run or walk for fun, the weather looks great! All this benefits Rowan Helping Ministries.
My daughter got a treadmill for Christmas! She has a marathon ahead and is struggling to get the outdoors work in. Running outside is always better than a treadmill workout because all races are held on the roads where the conditions can be challenging. Temperature extremes, sloped roads, turns, headwinds and rough pavement are just a few things that you won’t find when training on a treadmill.
But a good treadmill can help the training effort. If time is tight and you can only run for a certain number of minutes, do it on the treadmill and work on your form. If the race coming up is hilly, then use the incline and if pace is an issue, you can get a good feel for the desired pace quickly.
My granddaughter, the Booper, loves for me to read books to her. She is fascinated by good stories in library books where she now picks out her own. I just stand and wait till she comes back with 5-6 good ones. Then we read them in her order. I don’t get to choose.
Having just turned five in October, Booper noticed that our favorite reading recliner is getting tight. My butt is staying the same, but her little body is getting bigger. We talked about finding a new, wider recliner. I found individual theatre chair recliners for sale at Walmart online, but Booper didn’t like the color or the idea. My plan was to set two chairs side by side, but the arms would keep us from sitting together.
I showed Booper, sometimes called Monroe Bishop, the photos, to which she said, “But I want to sit beside you when we read!” I will admit that melted my heart, and soon we spent most of the day looking for a wider recliner, one with some growing room. We carried a tape measure because we only had 20 inches of width in our regular chair, and we needed at least 26 to allow for a little growing room.
I went to the Habitat Restore (a fascinating place), then together we went to Lexington and then back to Spencer shopping for the right chair. We reloaded on books along the way but couldn’t find the right chair. I dropped her off at home and we were both disappointed not to have the solution.
Alone, I made a trip to Concord, where I stopped at Big Lots on the first Saturday of their “going out of business” sale. It was just me, a parking lot full of cars and what seemed like hundreds in the store. People were sitting in the chairs they had picked out and just as I found the perfect wide recliner, another couple decided to buy it. With some luck, they got the showroom sample, and I got the last one still in a box at half price of the best one we saw at Transit Damaged Freight in Lexington.
My nephew mostly lugged it upstairs, while I tried to help. We got it set up and waited for the Booper to find it. She did, just a couple days before Christmas, and now we’re set for a few years to come with 27 inches plus of room. For now, with her fast moving childhood, I hope there are many more years of reading together. This segment didn’t have a thing to do with running, but that’s OK. The gift of grandchildren is especially meaningful at Christmas!
In other news, I passed 200 miles of running on Christmas Eve in just 64 days since Dr. Eline’s Kyphoplasty procedure. A glorious Lord’s gift of a five-miler on Christmas morning was special too, something that I wondered for a while if I could ever do again. Thank you for the continued prayers! Look for the Resolution Run and other events at www.salisburyrowanrunners.org
