Finding my runner's paradise

I feel good.  Really, really good.

Not that life is over-enthusiastically good right now.  My romantic life is still MIA, which is always fun.

And the first month of school has proved to be incredibly stressful this year.  Not in a bad way, I've just been so busy that I feel like I don't have a moment to breathe from 7:30 am to 4:30 pm.  I've barely had enough time to give myself 15 minutes to shove down lunch.

In fact, I just noticed this afternoon that I'm developing a small patch of eczema in the crevice between my middle and ring finger on my right hand.  My eczema is almost strictly stress-induced, and the last time I saw a patch emerge was when I was in the middle of working on my National Board certification back in 2010.

I also have officially been kicked off my own couch by the two little leeches that live in my apartment and feed off my hard earned living.

I mean, seriously, where do I fit?  Even though Lucy can somehow halve
her size by curling up into a tiny ball, I do not possess that skill.

But none of that matters.  Because I feel really good.

How is that possible, you might ask (and then probably be able to answer in the same breath, because you know me that well)?

Running!

I've been running a lot.  And for the first time in 2 years, running feels like it used to.

Now, I don't want to sound like a broken record here.  I know last winter/spring I wrote several posts that sounded like this:

"Oh my god, running is so great again!  I mean, I know I said that in my last post, but I was really just trying to convince myself that running was great, and it really wasn't.  But now it really is!"

Let me just call bullshit on myself here.  In all of those posts, those "I'm-trying-to-be-really-positive-but-in-reality-I'm-not" posts, I was grasping at straws.  I probably had a good run here and there, but if not physically, then at least mentally, running felt like crap more often than not.

As I mentioned here, I had lost my running esteem.  And it's taken a really long time to build it back.

Two years ago, right around this time, I was getting deeper into training for the Goofy Challenge.  That fall, I found myself chronically sick all the time--I couldn't breathe right, couldn't stop coughing and just generally felt down (later I learned that this was probably due to a wonderfully large amount of mold in my apartment, but that's a whole different story...).  And after that, I never really felt quite right.

I fell in love with running because I liked the way it made me feel.  In the years prior to the fall of 2012, running made me feel strong.  I would finish a run thinking "I killed that pavement!"  I finished runs feeling proud of the hills I conquered, the miles I covered, and the time I spent out on the road.  I finished runs in a mental state of mind that I wanted to get back to as often as I humanly could.  You may like to call it "runner's high," but I prefer to think of it as "runner's paradise."  Only great runs can take you there, and once you're there, everything seems perfect.

For two years, I struggled to find that runner's paradise, trying to convince myself that every once in a while maybe I did.  And perhaps I did.  But if I did, my visits there were very few and very far between.

But not now.  Now I really remember what good running feels like.  And I'm not trying to kid myself here.  Take a look at a recent page out of my training log:

I code each run with a smiley face, straight face, or sad face according to how I felt on the run.  During my Eugene training, I'd say about every other run was straight face, with a few sad faces thrown in.

But now, in my last 12 runs, only one hasn't been a smiley face run.  And the one straight face was because I was physically exhausted and running on low energy last Thursday after a long week at work.  Mentally, I was doing great.  And look at those little notes.  The exclamations of "felt strong!" and "felt really good!" are true expressions of surprise and excitement.

For every additional smiley face run I have, it builds my confidence that I've got more in me.  My legs feel more solidly strong and reliable than they have since that fateful autumn 2 years ago.  It's like I've developed muscles in them that haven't existed over the past two years.  Which is entirely possible.

Of course, I have theories about why exactly I've been able to find my runner's paradise so easily in the last few weeks.  And I will mostly like expound upon them.

But not yet.

With more to write, it gives me hope of more blog posts to come.

For now, I'm going to go to bed dreaming of my runner's paradise.

I hope you do too.

In runner's paradise after Beat the Blerch on Sunday.  Another blog post I
have yet to write...