A new year brings new years resolutions as the long days of darkness slowly start their climb back to the light.   The holidays provided a welcome break from routine with cheerful lights, good food, and chatty conversations with family and friends.   But I love the return just as much: coming back to my daily routine refreshed, renewed and open to the possibility of change.

I flip through the pages of last years running log and feel sometimes proud, sometimes sad.  Not every note from the constant planning and re-planning for the Goofy Challenge has been erased (I’ll admit to a bit of OCD when it comes to planning out my running schedules) and when I stumble on a projected run, I feel the sting of disappointment of not being where I was.  But all the hope and happiness is there too. Realizing that I could break the 2 hour mark if I knew it from the start (Surf City), and then lining up the pieces of the puzzle to break it in Maine.  That was my 2010 goal after all~  I didn’t know about the Goofy Challenge then, or the Ultradiet or just how great it would feel to try.

My new running log has a Bright Red cover.  No tasteful black linen for me, not this year, not now that I know.    I like the feel of the weight in my hand, the endless scribbles of projected runs and races and exercise routines and promises to myself.   Once the standard for architects before palm pilots, treos and iphones,   my running log is big and square like a book.   When I first started my practice,  it grew to be a familiar friend, cheerleader and trusted confidante.  http://www.paragrafdiary.com

Yesterday, I ran my first twenty minute run in six weeks, twenty delicious minutes.  Like a junky sniffing for fumes, I lapped up the endorphins I could and felt almost high, but not quite.   My bruised alchilles tendon has taught me a lesson.   Without running, my mood crashed bumpity bump bump to the bottom of self esteem hill.   When I can run, I feel better.   The more I run, the better I feel.  When I can’t run, I eat too much, feel confused and find excuses to not go to the gym.  I search on the internet for what I now know to be true but find little.   There must be some sort of chemical by product to running that just makes me feel more positive, decisive, confident, hopeful, and in tune with my life and its possibilities.   How can I not fall in love something that makes me feel so great?

So here I am at the bottom of the hill, looking up.  Everything seems too hard and far.  I am sleepy and grumpy and sad and don’t fit in my body.   I look up at the top of the hill and there I am, running again, eating well and moving forward to the promised land.  The bad news is that I am here.  The very good news is that I know how to get there~ step by step, mile by mile.