Sunday Run 2-19-12

When I made the final turn home about 200 meters from the finish line I felt a wave of emotion. I knew that it was going to happen. I was going to be on the team to London. This experience reminded me that you need to keep faith in yourself. Never count yourself out, you never know what you can do." - Kara Goucher

It was quiet the only way Sunday mornings can be....the world tucked tight into its dreams and the morning air sitting on the earth like a soft blanket,  warm for this time of year, and leading me out to my Sunday run adventure.   Determined to work out my 'rough spots',  I had no big agenda;  I wanted simply to move my way into a rhythm and see how far it felt like I needed to go.   Looping through the neighborhood,  by the time I headed west on Park, I felt the old contrast between our bodies at rest and our bodies in motion.  Usually more a conflict, sometimes a flght, I am coming to understand my lifelong quest to master my relationship with my body in a way in which rest feels like rest,  and motion is another nature state.   I am moving off the stress of racing and PRs, distances and times.  Much as I wish I was endowed to be invested in all of that, it is because I am an aging 'middle-packer' that I work for a relationship with running that works for me now.

The straight stretch through Park to my first pit stop was good in the Karhus...I am liking their light, balanced feel.   I decided to cut through 56th and round up Emerald Hills,  a modest 'long run' by comparison to training, but long enough to find that window where the aches decrease and the rhythm of the gait begins to churn up into a motion that feels like flight.  Many runners dissociate to handle distance;  perhaps the only positive application of this mechanism and a hold-over from childhood when we try to distance ourselves from pain.  For me,  it just feels like a journey, a 'trip' out of myself into a bigger Me,  which is linked in the vast matrix of world and where we blend into a perfectly entrained partnership.  Best yet is when I feel this whether in a good pace,  a walk- or even better- at any time I choose to link with that which is greater than me, sees more than I can- understands more.

The run is sometimes my doorway.   It is the confidence in my own connection at work.  Most folks prefer sitting meditation,  which I like as well,  or yoga and other moving meditations- also part of my routine.   They are aspects of Being which create windows to experience ourselves in natural ways.   It is the Natural World which prompts us to believe in the spiritual force of our physicality, as it links with our vibrations and resonates with our emotional minds.   Today,  you can enhance this relationship by taking in what Nature has offered;  whether you feel it through your eyes, your ears- or your heart.

Kara Goucher