Running Into Joy

Happy Monday, friends! A quick content warning: this post deals with some body image issues. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about my "why" for running. What keeps me lacing up my shoes and hitting the pavement or the trails week after week. The "why" is something we talk a lot about when we get into the mental aspect of running, and it can shift for each of us from day to day and year to year. For a long time, I've told my "falling in love with running" story as the day I ran my first 5K. The atmosphere of a cheering crowd, a sense of camaraderie as we ran as a pack along the closed-down streets of Evansville, Indiana. Never before had I done anything like this, where simply by putting one foot in front of the other, people cheered me on with handwritten signs, and I felt connected to strangers in friendly competition as I passed them or--more likely in those days--they passed me. And yet... 2020 is the year with no races. Without the forma...

Happy Tuesday, friends. Running a little late on the post this week because we're transitioning back to working from the office, so I'm back to a morning commute.  As you know, last week I ran the Sports Bra Squad 5K I’ve been training for since April.  The Badass Lady Gang is rolling right into the best your best 5-mile challenge. I was too late to register officially for this one, because commitments mid-August are hard for me as someone who works in higher ed.  Still, I plan to build strength and race my 5 miler twice along with everyone to see if I can beat my best time. On top of that, we’ve got the “Running from My Problems” 7 miler in September, which is possibly my favorite name for any race, ever (you can still sign up for that one here ). This new distance should fit very nicely into training for (drumroll please) my virtual half marathon. After a week of reflection between the cancellation announcement and the email to switch our registrations, I made the diffi...

I write to you from the hazy fog brought on by a string of heavy symptom days with occipital neuralgia. For the last few months of 2019, I enjoyed blissfully low to no symptoms and, in truth, felt very much like I was "better." And then... the tense headache warning of what's to come. So, as much as I love a crisp new planner and the start of a new year, I'm struggling to find optimism. It's hard to feel like it's a fresh new year when I'm carrying over the same old chronic pain that met me in August of last year. In spite of this, I carry the lessons with me that going for a run will actually improve symptoms, not make them worse. And so, as the year of my half marathon (fingers crossed) begins, I'm continuing my training plan. Yesterday, I met a challenge that feels both distant and familiar. My symptoms were heavy, shocking pains coming frequently and a tell-tale tightness in my right neck muscles. I debated skipping the day's 45 minute ru...

Happy November, friends. I've been working my butt off these last few weeks of October, as I've not only continued with the Run, Selfie, Repeat 5k training plan, but also participated in the Potterhead Running Club's all-out mileage extravangza, Quidditch. And now that November has come around, I've decided to set myself yet another challenge--I'm using the NaNoWriMo motivation to write 50,000 words of CNF this month. But this blog post isn't about the crazy writing and walking challenges I've set myself recently. It's about running. Or, as Kelly Roberts would say, maybe it's about "life with a side of running." The past couple weeks of training have honestly felt amazing. That's not to say there weren't runs where I struggled or days I had to really talk myself into going out the door. Of course there were. But the thing about not being able to run for so long is that I really appreciate the opportunity to get out there now...

-cue Eminem's "Without Me"- Guess who's back, back again? After running the Great Race 10K proved that my body can, in fact, still do the whole running thing, I decided to work my way slowly back into a routine before starting to train in earnest for the Flying Pig Half-Marathon in 2020. I put my deferral code to good use and registered for the 2020 race. Friends, it was not easy. I felt fearful and futile and small as I filled out the form, not fully believing my body would let me be ready next May. Fearing that I would have to defer again, an endless loop until I finally let the race fees go to race and the dream die. But I did it anyway. Because that's fear talking. That's the old voice that whispers "You're a quitter. You give up. That's what you DO." Didn't we fight this battle back in 2018 with the whole "become a runner" thing? Yeah, that's what I thought, too. But so it goes--the same old cycle, our patterns ...