Mommy Guilt

. . . and daughter guilt, and wife guilt, and neice guilt. Where does it end, really? Feels like I'm always supposed to be doing something for someone else, but if I want to take an hour to do something that's good for me, I'm WRONG. Especially since, when I want to take that hour, it means someone else has to keep the kids from killing each other for an hour. And I'm not supposed to ask anyone to do that. After all, they're my responsibility. Haven't been able to go out hardly at all here lately (run or walk), and then I discovered yesterday that my treadmill has finally COMPLETELY turned up its toes and died. :-( No one I trust to watch my kids has actually felt up to it lately, so my running training has fallen off the last couple weeks (only two runs each week), and I have my first 5K coming up on Monday. At the time I registered for it, although my pace is bad enough I wouldn't have made the distance, I at least would have been just finishing C25K at that time. Now, I'm about a week behind that. So, last night, after all that guilt culminated in a good cry over the unfairness of a mom having to feel guilty about every little bloody thing, I decided to toss the program out the window and just run for me. My goal for the night was simple: run/walk 5K as quickly as I could in reasonable comfort, and see how close I could come to my goal for Monday--complete the 5K in 45 minutes or less. I came in at 46 min 38 sec. Not too shabby, all in all. Ran some; walked some. Longest interval of straight running was only 10 minutes, but I didn't go out with the intention of torturing myself to make a certain number of minutes, only to see how close I could reasonably come to a total goal. Overall, other than tripping over the dog a couple times, I was happy with the run. It was a perfectly beautiful evening, with the heady perfume of honeysuckle on the breeze. Gotta love late May in rural Missouri! I was beginning to think I was never going to get a run in while the honeysuckle was in bloom. Then I sat at the computer later in the night and did some resistance band work for my upper body. Arms are a little sore today, so I'd say I did some good. Have an invitation to work out with some friends this evening. . . we shall see if I can slip away.