3 days

I worked out THREE days this week! I got in two work outs today, a run and some weight lifting. I was feeling quite amazed with me until I looked at my training log from last year. It was ... ummmmmmm ... nearly empty. My running was critically ill last spring and pronounced dead after the tornado last May. The log with it's bare pages, made me wonder why we stop?

Why do we stop anything? Especially things that make us who we are. Why do we stop eating right? Working out? Being friends? Loving? Reading? Writing? Singing? Doing things we love? I have no answers, only thoughts that I rant about in this blog. The good thing with stopping is you can always start again.

I've started again. Enough to get me out in freezing temps! Let me tell ya, a run in the cold?? Well, two things will happen. You will be impressed with your extensive vocabulary of expletives and you WILL feel alive. Your body will work HARD to warm you up and you will feel the air in your lungs and KNOW you are alive!!

GOD did give us this life to grab by the balls and LIVE!!! SO, I start again. I have a friend who wants to run with me! Haven't had that for a while. In May? A 5k! Exciting since I haven't run a race since October 2010. It had been a very regular part of my life so I am looking forward to welcoming it back. I'm reading again as well, my favorite blogs and all kinds of books that open my eyes to the world.

Have you stopped something that makes you, well, you? Why? Find your running ...

A breakup ...

A gut wrenching heartbreak. A change in the way your future looks, it's a great diet and a great way to kick start a running program that has been lagging. Lagging as mentioned before since F5!! I still don't know what happened to my running love that May day. I just know running has been a struggle ever since.

The breakup sidelined me yet again. Maybe it wasn't the breakup, perhaps it was just the PROFOUND sadness that came over me in having to "do the breaking". That sadness combined with running through the streets of my still BROKEN town. Yet, one day, you wake up and you feel just a little better and the (slow) runner inside you feels like trying again.

I did a run/walk/limp ok, ok ... crawl thing two days last week. It felt good, the hope I felt back in November is still there and even more so. More houses are going up, beautiful houses. I wonder as I run (ok ...crawl) by about the excited anticipation the owners must feel!! Hope after the utter devastation of their lives last May.

My beloved hospital (my home away from home) is days away from the start of the demolition process! Long overdue, the pain I feel in seeing her go? She needs to go, so the future can be built, so the pain of seeing her can go away. So ultimate healing can begin for her employees. That will bring hope to my run as well. The decades old building I could once only see on certain routes? She is now a carcass of painful memories. I can see her standing at some point in my run, no matter which route I take.

What an analogy for "you can't run from the past". However, you can run, walk, limp or even crawl toward the future with hope. There may be tears streaming down your face and deep pain in your heart but you can. My hope is to be ready for the first 5K I ever ran, I want to run it again in May!! Maybe I can add to the sixteen pound weight loss from the breakup. There is ALWAYS a silver lining. Today I will crawl on and find my running.