So In Love

Its time I wrote about the love of my life.

Our time together leaves me panting and breathless and wishing I could spend my time this way every hour of every day. I love how my heart races. How I break such an amazing sweat.

After all. I am in love.

With running.

(Hey, if your mind was in the gutter up to this point, that is not my fault.)

It’s been a long damn winter up here on the tundra and the runner in me has been relegated to the rat wheel at the gym for months. Now, I realize the gym for some people is a great social outlet. Not for me. I am a mom and my time is compartmentalized, delegated, and spoken for. When I carve out an hour to run it’s because I gave up an hour doing something else like cooking or laundry. On top of that, I do anything but dress in matching pink Nike gear. No way. I wear a baseball hat, old cut off sweats with bleach spots, and if I have a zit I don’t even cover it up. Why? I’m not there to impress anyone.

I’m there to run.

Now that spring has arrived I can run even longer because all I need to do is lace up my Aesics, crank up my iPod, and bound out my front door.

Today was the first day my shoes have seen asphalt since sometime last November. For months I’ve pounded the belt of the treadmill shoulder to shoulder with strangers, oblivious to their presence, concentrating only on my breathing.

But not today.

I try to restrain myself from starting out in a full blown sprint I’m so excited to finally be outside without a parka on. I head north and the sun paints my shadow on the street in front of me. I chase it for a mile and half, run along Main for a couple blocks, and then head back the direction I came. The crisp wind bites me but the sunshine kisses it, making it all better.

And all the while Keith Urban sings to me. Some song about a woman who left the relationship she was in.

It took awhile for her to figure out she could run
But when she did, she was long gone

I smile and take his figurative lyrics literally for a moment as I remember all those years I didn’t exercise at all. Yeah, it took me a long time to figure out I could run, too.

But now I have.

And I am truly, madly and deeply in love with it.

And long.

Long.

Gone.