First Run, First Glow

Yesterday I found myself winding down after the holiday and getting the house picked up and then I decided I was going to go up to the elementary school down the street from me to exercise, with hopes of no one being around so I could really savor the "me" time. The school is up on a big hill and the drive winds up to it with wooded areas surrounding it so it is very secluded. Back behind it is a baseball diamond with a little bit of paving around it and the parking lot goes all around the school like a moat to a castle so there is plenty of space to stretch out and run. I got my dog in the car and my spotify playlist ready and headed over. My wish came true, no one in sight! I was planning to use the baseball green to just do some back and forth plyometrics and work up my heart rate and just kind of do whatever I felt like to get the blood flowing and feel reconnected to my body. As I started off I noticed several piles of bear poop lol so I decided to take on the pavement instead. My dog laid in the grass near the bleachers watching me like a hawk.

As I started off, all the aches and the weight of my body really began to occur to me like a ton of bricks. It has been so long since I shook the dust off, moved in this way, felt my muscles, and after all this time and all the pounds I have regained and then some, it felt awkward, like a foreign language, and there was almost a glimmer of despair that I could feel gripping my legs. Push through, push through, push through.

After about 3-4 back and forths on this paved part of the field behind the batter's cage, the engine started to turn. I could feel the proverbial sh*t starting to fall to the wayside and my shoulders started to awaken, the rhythm in me started to quietly pick up and I started to feel that old spark I used to feel. I felt a smile break across my face and I kept going, kept feeling the beat of the music in my ears pulsate through my feet, and even though I know I was going slower than a dead person, it felt awesome. I lost track of how many loops I did and I began to just get creative and I was doing loops around the parking lot and back up the little hill then across the diamond to the other part then back around as I was visualizing it and just letting myself decide in the moment what direction to go in next and how to change it up, just allowing myself to make choice after choice as long as I kept moving. I kept at it for 45 minutes and I was reminded again of how important choice is to me in all of this. I said it before, but having that freedom and choice in my workouts is so simple but so empowering for me. It's like the cultivation of self-agency in motion. I was thinking about something a friend, LIMELIGHTSHINES said to me recently, that our friend ABETTERCHERYL said:

Progress Not Perfection.

We have to start with where we are at at this very moment, no matter how different where we where when we fell off was from where we are today. Every day is a new day onto itself. I am no longer even the person I was yesterday. We live in each moment because it truly is the only moment that exists, and that zen is so important to my running life. My ability to move forward. In running, in life, in anything. One step at a time. One day at a time. One good feeling at a time. Hang on to this feeling.