Getting a Hold on Myself

I left any expectations about this morning's run behind.  I woke when I came awake, which is pretty much my usual time, thanks to my work and training schedule.  My body is firmly grounded in my routine which works for me.  Even fluctuations will not throw me too far off.  The lack of plan is my way of looking into the template of miles per week and exploring what supports my optimal health.

It was just shy of comfortably cool;  the winds pull the chill into me, and my lack of internal thermostat makes regulating me to stay warm, even on the run, a challenge.  Sure enough, as I passed the park, women in shorts, shirts etc contrast with my pull over and knit headband.  Once I adjusted, however, the resistance from the wind coming full in my face all the way up/down the overpass and 29th Street became a strong part of the drill;  the core of running is endurance.   What facilitates our fitness is the ability to adapt to, and persist in our pace even when conditions change. 

I have this knack of holding this meta-analysis in my head while my body performs the percussive back and forth of the run.  Wood carving had a similar effect on me;  the process of wood mass, whether root, slab or stump undergoing my persistent pounding to find the inner image- sometimes taking 6 months or a year on big sculptures,  was my first experience with the effect of 'practice' on my psyche, and surely what 'broke me open' in those days.  Since then, I have had an understanding that Big Goals are what propel me.  I need the feeling of effort and energy, the creation of, like any artist acting from inner compulsion to pull something-from nothing- into this world. 

Running has no physical imprint.  Maybe this is one reason it awakens something important in me in this stage of my life.  I need 'works' to validate my Inner Eye.  I need running to sync my inner and outer lenses to amplify my perception.  And it must work, because the calm and groundedness I feel on the run seems to be the springboard for having the endurance to handle everything else.

I have always said my reason for being whatever I am, artist, writer, counselor, runner comes from this inexplicable awareness always within me of the vast Realities of manifest Life;  the dark places that used to trip and toss me onto brush piles of psychic debris feel more like hidden gold.  I still stumble;  but just as I hit waves of fatigue, when my feet refuse the pace I hear in my head,  if I give it a minute, I usually rally.   I always do.   We must come to have confidence in Ourselves.