IT JUST FEELS GOOD

We all have our reasons why we do the things we do.  Runners are no different.  I have heard hundreds of reasons why people run.  Some run to lose weight or stay in shape.  Some run competitively and want to win races or break their personal records.  Some just run to keep the voices in their heads at bay.  I’ll be honest – all of those and many other reasons apply to me as well.  Ask me why I run several times throughout the course of a year and you may get several different answers.  Today, however, I remember the real underlying reason to why I run.

I am usually a superb sleeper.  It is just one of my talents.  I can fall asleep quickly and I generally crash hard.  Unfortunately, the past week has not been my best pillow work.  You know how it is…wife with a bad cold coughing all night and watching Bones ‘til the wee hours, dogs that, for some reason, feel it necessary to cause mayhem and destruction at 2 AM, kids that seem to save their most pressing issues until ten o’clock and then they want to have a heart to heart talk, and maybe a tad too much manic energy on my part.  Whatever the reasons, sleep has become an issue over the past week or so.  That is why last night was so magical.  Everybody was in bed by ten.  I was zonked by 10:05 (as previously mentioned I am a great sleeper.)  I woke up at 4:49 (one minute before my alarm would have started singing it’s horrible song.)

4:50 is the time of day where an important decision is made.  Do I reset the alarm out another hour or do I get up and run?  Sleep is important when you work 10+ hours a day in front of an evil computer so the circumstances of the past week have seen me reset the alarm every day…until today.  Today I woke up and did my quick evaluation of whether I was ready to face a new day.  I WAS.

Now I love running at any time of the day but there are a couple of times that seem a bit more sacred.  I really love a good run in the summer at dusk when the world is just starting to get dark and the fireflies are out and everything just seems magical.  The other sacred time is pre-dawn when the world is still sleeping and all is peaceful.  Pre-dawn also just happens to be my best window of opportunity because of all of the stuff that needs to get done in any given day.  You know what they say – there ain’t no runnin’ like pre-dawn runnin’.

SO…after five days of not running, I finally got my run on this morning.  What did I discover upon completing my run?  I discovered just how great I feel.  My body feels great.  My head feels great.  I figured out why I run.  IT JUST FEELS GOOD.  Running makes it all right.