It has been a While - Trying to Get Back

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It has been a while since I have posted anything on my blog.  Ironically my blog is titled runin' my life, but my life has been running me.  At least for the last few months.  I chose to pull back while I tried to recenter myself.

This has been a really tough year.  Turns out to be not at all what I planned at the beginning of the year, as we now close in on the end of the year.  I am excited to put it behind me and also weirdly grateful for the challenges and chaos it brought.  That is why I love this song.  I feel like women sometimes spend so much time trying to make sure everyone else is happy, making sure everyone likes us...we rarely ask do I like me?

After this year of tough runs and bad races, missed goals, lost family members, illness, and new responsibilities I think I realized somewhere in there I have to like me.  Even though I have not been blogging I have been running and I have been doing my strength training.  For a while I wasn't doing it with a happy heart, more like checking a box.  I guess that is where I am grateful that running and fitness became a habit, so I could at least get it done, because that is what I do; until I could do it because I wanted to do it.

Knock on wood I think that is where I am finally.  I have been enjoying my exercise lately.  Wanting to do it, getting up happily instead of begrudgingly.  I have made some decisions about next year.  No big distance races.  I am going to focus on 5Ks and 10Ks with my husband,  I enjoy some distance running but I will do that on my own, for myself when I feel like it, not because a race plan is breathing down my neck.  For me it is time to get back to the basics of fun running.

I also hope to get back to blogging about the crazy things a peri-menopausal, way less than perfect, 45 year old nonathletic geek, runs into on an imperfect journey to stay healthy despite a genetic minefield!  Here is hoping your journey has been smoother than mine and to finding the fun and the humor is liking ourselves.

I am still grateful for many things, not the least of which is waking up everyday a little worse for the wear and wiser!