Living A Runner's Life

Our New House

Good morning! Went out for a very nice 4.75 mile run today. It's amazing how the body just responds to old habits. Let's be honest. My running this year has been anything but Josh-like. Today, though, it felt good. Felt right. I'll expand on that a bit later.

2012 on the whole has been WONDERFUL! The blessings Sarah, Myles, & I have received have been incredible. While these blessings have made it more difficult to find time to run, I would not trade them for anything. In March Sarah matched with IU Dermatology for residency, we bought a house, and Indiana made a Sweet 16 run. In April, I received increased job responsibilities at work and my niece, Lucy, was born. In May, Sarah graduated from medical school and we moved to our new place. Therefore, it's been one crazy couple of months.  Looking forward to the rest of 2012 as the best has yet to come.

I'll admit that running has been hard to dedicate myself to this year, especially when we were moving and learning to take care of our new place. Even when I would get up to go run, Myles would throw a fit and wake up Sarah (he had a difficult adjustment to his new environment). I have felt that pang of guilt about not running and not blogging and the more that the guilt grew the harder it was to get out the door.  I became discouraged about not running and even stopped wearing shirts from old races becuase it reminded me of what I was not doing.  And...that's hard because my wardrobe is 30% running shirts, 30% IU shirts, and 40% work stuff.  Today, though, the stars aligned, I woke up ready to run, Myles was calm, and I just went for it. On my run I got to thinking about how mentally it takes focus while running to complete the run successfully. And...when I'm running well on a daily basis, I'm able to string that focus from one day to the next day and so forth.  I'm better at running when I live the time inbetween my runs as a "runner" rather than "a guy that runs from time to time."  I need to be wearing those running shirts, blogging, and planning my weekly runs because the only way to get back on track is to live a runners life.  It's time to start stringing days together so that it once again becomes more difficult to not run than to run. For those of you who run and follow my blog, I hope this helps in the sense that even the most dedicated runners who love it sometimes struggle with motivation or life balance. We are all human and as runners in this together.

Happy running to you. Enjoy the photo of the house (with the IU flag of course). Hope to write again soon.