lost and found

In about 5 weeks, it will be time for this spring's Big Race.

Five weeks.

I drug myself through January and February, spending most days wondering how I would ever make it to the Big Race, let alone actually through it. I can remember exactly two runs in those two months that were not marked by the word pain. And I really, truly thought I was done running.

But.

March arrived. And even though it's still freezing cold, there's some sunshine. And I decided that I didn't want to be drug through March. So I dug in

I gave up chocolate for Lent (notmetalkaboutit). I pulled out my old, trusty training plan and amended it to fit the new normal. I got to work.

I quit running in the knee braces, and save them for some post-run therapy.

I've been running up and down hills. Big ones.

I've been to the track for speed work. (Granted, to anyone watching it would not look like speed work. But speed it a relative term.)

And today I hit ten miles again. It was long, and it was hard, and the near constant freezing wind didn't help anything. But it was good.

Because, for the first time in a long time, I felt kinda like myself again.

I've missed me.

I have five weeks to run up and down hills, and run circles around the track, and inch my mileage up, little by little.

And that makes me smile.

And Big Race doesn't seem like such an impossibility anymore.

Stride on.