I know what I want.

This week was rough. I felt like I was carrying a lot of extra weight around and it was dragging me down. My head was in overdrive. Not a lot is going on in life right now but there's just a few things that I can't get out of my brain. So I think about them over and over and over again, picking every little detail apart. Isn't that what girls do best? It gets you no where by the way,  just turns you into a crazy person. My normal way to deal with this is to go for a run. Leave the headphones at home, along with my phone, and just go. Just me and the pavement.  Run and run and run until I've silence whatever is going inside my head. Whether that means figuring it out, having an ah-hah! moment, coming to terms with it, or just leaving it on the road and telling myself I'm done with it. Enter my problem of the week: I pulled my achilles tendon AND I got the cold from hell which left me with a week full of not running. Which really made me antsy.  All week I stared at my running shoes longingly and all week they stared back telling me to go find something else to do to keep my mind occupied. So I did, I wrote in my journal, I tried my hand at water color, I cleaned, I baked bread, I read lots of books, I called people I haven't talked to in awhile, I blogged :)...and it was all really good. And I realized that I don't always need to run to quiet my mind. There's a plethora of other possibilities that work almost as well and put a lot less stress on my body. But when I found out my friend was doing a 21 mile run Saturday morning by herself to prep for the New York marathon in a few weeks, I thought to myself, "No one should have to run 21 miles alone." So I  rested and iced and stretched my little leg best I could and told her I'd gladly join her for part of it. And boy was it great. I mean, it didn't feel so great physically. My body ached, my calves were screaming, and frankly I just felt tired (And I only did around 16 miles with her), but oh man it was exactly what I needed to finally really shed this extra whatever that I've been hauling around these past few weeks. I now know exactly what I want, I only wish I had figured it out a few weeks earlier. But the truth remains running never fails me. Looks like this week may be more painting and reading though because my legs are really not happy with me.