Just Run

Putting aside time
and ignoring the distance,
I become the wind.

This morning I just ran.

I put aside the timer.  I put aside the distance counting.  I just went out and ran this morning.

Why?  Because I realized this morning that I starting to flag in my running - and that is not a good thing.  I need to keep up with it, get better at it, continue to do it, when in fact all I am finding is that my enthusiasm is waning a little more every day.

As pondered this in the morning as I prepared to run I realized that part of the issue was that it was become a regimented activity for me:  get ready at a certain time, run the course I always run, look at my time and enter it, and carry on.  No sense of fun there.  No sense of seeing something different or getting better at something.  Just day in, day out, mechanical running.

That is not a good development.

In order to have the desire to become more skilled at anything, one must have some level of fun involved with the thing:  one has to want to do it.  One has to have some level of "Hey, I enjoy this" and sometimes just do it for the sheer pleasure of doing it.  Without that, the activity will simply become a duty - and duties, as well know, will be cast off as soon as we no longer have to do them.

So I just ran.

I will enter a distance of course and some kind of time, but that is it.  I will not check to see my splits or averages.  I will just glory in the fact that after an evening of pounding rain I arose and saw the clouds and sun - and just ran.