Song of the post: “Word Forward,” Foo Fighters
By Veterans Day, Nov. 11, my running season will come to an end for 2014. According to the calendar I keep in my house, I’ve logged 506 miles. When you look at my MapMyFitness account, I’ve done a lot more. I usually round down my milage on the calendar, so it’s nice to see that I’m actually doing more than I thought. Or I could be awful in math, which would suck. But you don’t need to know about that.
I did make you a promise. In October, I promised blog posts galore in honor of the site’s two-year anniversary.
But life, as it always does with my plans, intervened and told me to focus on something else.
And that focus brought some clarity that I have long wanted.
I have always fashioned myself as a Renaissance woman, someone who dabbled in a bit of everything, but master of none of it.
Because of this, I lack focus. I can work hard at cleaning, but I just go a surface clean, I don’t get the stuff in the corners and really make a room spotless.
I run, but don’t adhere to any formal training program because life happens, I know I can’t hit certain benchmarks.
You know what? I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know what I was capable of until I just did it.
My husband gave the kids and I milage goals for our daily runs recently. Put in the miles and you get something. I was determined to help the kids earn their toys.
So every morning, even if I went to bed a mere four hours beforehand, I got up and got everyone ready for a run.
And we meet our goal. There were days I didn’t want to get out of bed, but we went anyway. I saw my middle child, Mountain Kid 2, run three miles without stopping for a walk break. For us, and him, that was huge. Maybe I don’t suck as this commitment thing as much as I thought.
After the running season ends, I plan to get at least 30 minutes of some kind of exercise in every day.
I also hope to make a better effort to keep my hands free of devices while I’m with my family. I also want to work to change my family tree, break some of the bad habits that led to the problems I faced in October.
Don’t get me wrong, October brought a lot of great things into my life. I’ve been moving forward, though not at a pace some would like. I also dealt with a few setbacks, but I refocused more quickly.
I hope to look back on November 2014 fondly. So far, so good.