1 year Runniversary

I started running a year ago - January 2102, I got a wild hair and decided that I was going to be a runner.  Laughable, really, if you knew me.  Hate the gym, I'm lazy, fickle, and decidedly un-tough.  Not exactly the type of person who gets up off the couch and laces up some fancy shoes and goes running.

But I did.  One slow step after another - and one year and a few hundred miles later, here I am.  A runner.

Running saved my life.  Not because I was obese or ill or hooked on drugs or anything like that.  Sure, I could stand to lose a few pounds (and have, thanks to running), and it's possible that my relationship with peanut butter cups isn't EXACTLY rational, but the truth is, I started running not so much to rescue my body, but to rescue my mind.

Never having been much of a social butterfly, when I quit my job in 2007 to stay home with my son, I essentially lost all contact with the outside world.  After my daughter was born in 2009, things got even harder.  I tried my best to keep up a happy face, but the truth is, I was struggling.   Martha Stewart, I am not, so staying at home all day left me restless and unfulfilled.  As much as I love my children, as the years of being at home started to pile up, more and more I was rebelling - but only in my head, and truth be told, it was getting rather loud in there.

I enrolled in a local community college, thinking maybe my I needed to stimulate my brain.  It didn't help.  The one thing that has helped calm the waves of insanity - not dispel them entirely, but at least calm them - is running.  Being able to put on my shoes and go, no iPod, no tiny hands grabbing at me, no husband asking if I'd washed his favorite shirt - just the sound of my feet, my breath, my thoughts.   Mine.

Running saved my life.

I'm 34 years old.  I have two kids, a husband, and a dog.  I am a runner.   Welcome to my insanity.