Getting Back on the Track

Two days before my mom died, I finally got back on the track, something I'd been talking about doing for several years. [image error]However, after her death on March 24, my life was obviously turned upside down in many ways and it was hard to get back to it. I had signed up for a road race (which was nearly two weeks ago) and my plan was to work on slowly getting my time down by entering periodic races. But I needed the track workouts to help me get there.

Finally this past Saturday I promised myself I would do one. I couldn't remember my times from the last one but I decided my goal would be to not stop. It might sound silly that, being someone who has been running since I was twelve, I issues with stopping but it's because the role of running has changed so much in my life.

I am obivously not a teen girl running on her high school track and cross country team anymore. I don't have a coach to breath down my back (I had one in junior high who really did that and the initimidation worked). I don't have meets to enter weekly or a state meet to work at qualifying for.

Because I was running three repeat 1600s (that's four laps each), I had plenty of time to think about all this. While at times I would "check out" mostly because I didn't want to think anymore, in the beginning I found myself exploring why I was running and how those reasons had changed over the years of my life.