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Enjoy my nails that celebrate the sunshiney sun

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I have moved my body for the first time in a long time after being involuntarily committed to my bed for a week of fever, dizziness, sore throat, cough, congestion and absolute fatigue. I have a wheeze and lingering cough now but managed to get outside today for some fresh air and a light walk.

I cannot wait to run again. I missed a whole week of runs and was stressing about it while barely able to walk from my bed to the couch.

I also missed a lot of work but was able to keep up on the critical tasks from my bed. Hopefully the new hire made it through his first week just fine with only one formal day of training.

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Young Woman With Sword by Jules-Élie Delaunay (1828-1891)

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Marie Yvonne Laur - Delicious Milk (ca. 1900s)

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Leo Malempré - Seated woman and her cat (1911)

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Beautiful image captured under a polarizing microscope.

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Peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control.

-Jack Kornfield

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Doing is never enough if you neglect Being.

Eckhart Tolle

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Guido Biasi (1933‑1984) — Spettatore di una Cometa  (oil on canvas, 1957)

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Still vibing off the high of yesterday’s potent cocktail of caffeine, sunshine, and a long run outside

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I feel absolutely fantastic after today’s run. It was sunny and beautiful and there was a pair of bald eagles chillin. This was my longest run to date.

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Today I ran 6 miles which is something I never thought possible less than a year ago. Even though I took walk breaks and didn’t run the entire time, I committed to keeping my heart rate in zone 2 for the run and was over a mile in before a walk break. I still need those breaks to keep my heart rate in check. But I’m improving every day.

Last summer I couldn’t sustain even a minute of running and now I am addicted to improving and lengthening my runs. I know I can run at least 5K without walk breaks which makes me break down in tears of joy for how far I’ve come. I wouldn’t have believed I could do this a year ago.

I’m signed up for a half marathon in April and thinking about a marathon in October and even dreaming about a local ultra next year.

I stumbled into running completely on accident. I bought a treadmill at a low, low in my life determined to just started walking. I noticed huge improvements in my mental health, mobility, and overall quality of life very quickly and kept at it. Then I found a sports bra that actually held me together and just decided one day that running seemed like something to try out. And I didn’t stop.

I followed a Couch to 5K program and cried the first time I ran for 20 minutes straight during the program and cried again after I ran my first 5K race.

Running is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in some ways. But it’s given me confidence in areas of my life that I didn’t have confidence.

I know I can do hard things.

And now I crave it. I want it. I drive home from work looking forward to a run. I wake up in the morning excited to go run.

I am the slowest runner I know, but I don’t give a fuck. I am not here to compare my runs to others, but to myself overtime, and I can report huge improvements. My quality of life has improved so much that it’s now clear to me I am running for my life.

And I don’t want to stop.

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As the Buddha described life, he spoke of pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame, fame and disrepute, often described as “the eight worldly winds.” It’s just how life is. There is no one who experiences only pleasure and no pain. There is no act that elicits only praise and no blame. Appreciating this fact is not a call for apathy or depression. We can recognize the truth of things, accept them as the inevitable fabric of life, and understand that the best way to work for change is not to be freaked out, or in denial, or anxious with the ups, lest they dissolve, and plummet with the downs, fearing they won’t. Equanimity implies a posture of dignity even in a whirlwind of change. It implies being able to breathe. It implies complete presence. It implies being able to come to peace. If we take the time to reflect on the inevitable turnings of life, it will build our equanimity. If we practice fully experiencing the joy of certain moments without fearfully clinging to them, it will build equanimity. If, as Joanna Macy says, we look at the pain and keep breathing, it will build equanimity. All of it will build a quality of radiant calm that is intricate, shifting, alive.

Sharon Salzberg

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Almada Negreiros (1893-1970 ) “Trapezista” Tinta da China sobre papel