72 hours ...

That's ALL it takes to start losing cardiovascular fitness. LOL! Try almost five months. At five months? Your body will chew you up and spit you out like you're the worst thing it ever tasted. It's looks at you like your parents did when you were REALLY bad. It will ask you, "how do you live with yourself ?" However, just like your parents, teachers and preachers. Once it's done punishing you for all your months of misbehavior, your body will take you by the hand and move you forward.

The consequences for your sins will be GREAT!! Your legs will burn, your hips will ache and your butt will jiggle. Your lungs?? They would yell help if they could. Your will stop FOUR times in a 2.5 mile run to stretch. Your dog? She will look at you with HATE in her eyes. You've given her almost five months off and she is tired. She will look in longingly in the direction of home many times. Yet, somewhere during your run, you will channel something you can't explain. It's your spirit, the uummpphh that makes you take another step forward. Your spirit includes the memory of NYC marathoners that inspired you just hours ago. The spirit makes you feel like your running just like the winners of that marathon, even when your limping along, praying for an ambulance to come by.

Along your run? You will see, "EARL WAS HERE". It will be spray painted on driveway in a lot that once had a house. You will laugh. You will think of the spirit Earl had and you will run on aching and burning all the way. Find your running...

I notice ...

As I sit here, clinging to my protein shake for dear life, I discovered, the body, welcomes back running. Welcomes it, like the jock welcomes the itch, the ass welcomes the pain and a heart welcomes the break. Still, when running is an old friend? The body welcomes it. I got out today and ran, ok,ok, jogged (the SLOWEST TWO MILES EVER) on the streets of my destroyed neighborhood that I have to long avoided. It was a beautiful day and there are indeed signs of hope EVERYWHERE!! Houses are raising where rubble once laid, the roads are clear for running and old, damaged homes are new again. SO MUCH hope, that I to have hope that I will be able to get up off this couch. A nasty cough sidelined my attempts to find running again for five weeks. However, today it found me and my trick hip. I can still run, all be it slowly and I am THANKFUL!! Thankful for my healing city. Thankful for lungs that burn. Thankful for chubby legs that can carry me places. Thankful for a dutiful pup who plods along beside me. Thankful for HOPE and the GOD who gives us that HOPE. Find your running ...

I kind of ...

Accidentally found running. I was the chubby kid, the uncoordinated girl, always picked last for the team. I was not and still am not gifted in sports. I dabbled in volleyball in junior high, cheered for a minute in high school but never found a real talent or love for any sport. For one foolish split second I even tried basketball.

At twenty NINE, I met a runner, Stacie. Many conversations later I decided I was going to run a marathon or a 5K. I knew not a thing about running, not even the distance difference between the 5k and a marathon. I can't even remember the day I started. I just did one day. My earliest runs were at the gym on a treadmill and a track behind my now destroyed place of employment St Johns Regional Medical Center.

That track is no longer there. It is now a parking lot for the new "comeback hospital" Mercy St Johns. Like that track my running world met near destruction this past May 22. An EF5 tornado pummeled my town, my hospital, my life.

So like my parents, my town, my hospital, I will journey to find running again. I've run once on the roads of destruction that were once my neighborhoods. The places, streets, houses, signs, schools, etc that had become safe familiar friends. I cried.

I need to find running again because I can and because I am blessed to be healthy enough to run. I need to run for those who can't, run for all the slow, chubby and last to be picked girls out there. I need to run to find healing as my town heals. Here I go ...