Got up early to run in the snowstorm with my friend, N, who is my faithful early morning running partner, and inspiration. She has been running regularly much longer than I have, and what interests me is that she has no desire whatsoever to compete in a race. She runs purely for the love of it, and because it releases stress and makes her feel good. She considers it a key factor for her own mental health.
I'd been trying to talk her into running a nice slow half-marathon with me, because I need someone who will run slowly and steadily and keep me from killing myself with competition. Today, we started off feeling sluggish and found the running difficult, and it got easier and easier the further we went. We stayed slow. It felt like we could have gone for a long long time (longer than the almost-hour we did go for), running at this nice slow pace. When I run by myself I'm always pushing it, testing myself, trying to go faster, further, more hills, whatever the challenge may be. Somehow, I lose the joyfulness of running purely for the sake of moving my body.
We had to run in the road, in the few tracks that had been left by cars, through snow up past our ankles, till we found one street that had been mysteriously cleared (it was not a main or busy street). I've been using yak-traks on my shoes, which my husband got me for Christmas. I layer up, and wear some windbreaker gloves, also a Christmas gift, and by the end of a run I'm sweating and hot. I finished off the run with some upper body work: shovelling snow off our sidewalk. "We are the champions," was the song in my head as I cleared the walk at 7am.
My hamstrings are still tight from a particularly exciting kundalini class on Saturday evening. I also ran both Saturday morning and Sunday morning. I took Monday off, mostly because I couldn't drag myself out of bed for the early morning silent yoga class, which was my only chance to exercise that day; but was back at it yesterday, with a 90-minute yoga class to clear out my head after a frustrating writing day, and then the run this morning. The yoga class reminded me that no matter how steadily and how often I practice, sometimes it's just harder than others--yesterday was brutal. It's not like I'll ever reach a point where I'm so beautifully fit that exercise becomes easy. Sometimes I'm tired, physically or mentally; or I haven't eaten enough; or I'm a bit dehydrated. But no matter what, no matter how difficult, I am always always always glad I've gotten up, or gotten out. I must remember that.
Seems obvious, and seems like I need constant reminding, but it feels so good to move my body. It's worth the early morning alarm, the need for a late-afternoon nap, and all of the tight scheduling that must be done in advance to squeeze it into my life.
I need to work in a swim one day a week. But first, I need to finish this book I'm writing, which is not about triathlons or exercising or yoga; though maybe it should be. Maybe I'll find a way to incorporate that into the storyline, as I aim to tie everything together here in the last fifty pages or so--my life and my character's life, diverging and connecting.
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