I’ve had lots of excuses for not running in the last 18 months. At first it was because we had just moved and there was a lot of snow on the ground and I didn’t really feel like breaking my neck. And then I got pregnant. And then I had just had a baby. And then there was snow on the ground again.
Then my husband got me some Yaktrax, which removed my fear that I might break my neck. The first time I wore them it was -18C (about 0F) and I managed to stay warm enough and figured I was good to go. But then in January I twisted my ankle and I stopped running, and I didn’t really start again.
I started to think maybe I wasn’t a runner anymore. I was feeling too old and achey. My knees weren’t cooperating. I was sucking wind and generally feeling like all my running mojo had veered off the path and run away without me.
I did other things. Boot camps and Jillian Michaels workouts and yoga. Long walks with big hills. Pilates. All of which were fine, but I didn’t find myself in any of them. There was a piece of me missing.
So I took to the trails again.
I’ve walked a lot in our area in the short time we’ve been here, but when I started running I didn’t yet have my go-to running routes the way I used to. And we live on a ridge, so no matter what direction I go I end up coming home on a hill. But still, I ran. I looped out and back, and followed paths. I found some trails and ran them to see where they went. I still sucked wind, but I was running. I had no particular thoughts about it; it just seemed good enough.
This morning when I got up I re-evaluated my planned run. My knees were complaining and I was sore after a challenging yoga practice last Wednesday and a stroller fit class on Friday. I was feeling like I’d been working hard and maybe skipping a run wouldn’t be a bad thing.
And then I got inspired and figured I’d do a short one. It was my day to walk the dog anyway.
If you follow my Facebook page you know how it turned out. I got to the end of the “out” part of my planned out-and-back and saw the entry to a path I hadn’t seen before. So I went down it. To make an hour-long story short, I got lost. After following a series of paths I ended up way, way down at the bottom of a glen and, just as I was starting to wonder where the trail came out, it ended.
Apparently this is where the sidewalk ends.
I have no idea why the trail ends there. At some point, someone must have decided that was all they were going to do. Or maybe they ran out of asphalt.
In any case, I found my mojo. It was down at the bottom of a glen, waiting for me on a rainy Sunday morning.
I’m a runner again.
