Please Believe....

that just because most of my posts involve running and me skipping through a meadow of flowers together, rolling around all lovey dovey, and truly understanding and respecting each other, doesn't mean that I don't have days/runs that suck. It happens. Often. Today fucking sucked.

I woke up grumpy, and I'm pretty sure that it had NOTHING to do with the glass(es) of wine that I drank staying up late watching the Biggest Loser. And then Hoarders.

After I taught Body Back this morning I stumbled around the house irritated that it was messy, irritated that my kids were whining for things like food and water, confused that my husband was asking me how his outfit looked for work, and feeling like the coffee I made was weak.

I knew what needed to happen. I needed to run. All signs were pointing to the pavement and I have an afternoon session of love. Yup. I secured a sitter for the girls, and my day was already feeling a little brighter knowing I had a plan. See, I haven't run in over a week, nursing my injury and this adorable smoker’s cough that has settled in my lungs and chest and has shown no sign of leaving. Ever. (note: I don't really smoke. I made this joke the other day and someone thought I was serious ;)

I dropped the girls off and headed to my friend’s house to start my run. No, she wasn't running with me, but from her house to the pier and back is exactly 6 miles...plus she has a fridge full of beer that I knew I could raid when I was done.

I sat in her kitchen lacing up my shoes and bitching up a storm about how grumpy I was...and that really, I didn't want to run. She smiled- nice, thanks friend, and said HA! now you know how the rest of us feel! Ummmm, hello?! I feel like this all the time too. I just know better, that's all.

I headed out, and immediately felt like shit. My legs were heavy and tired, and it was windy. God this is going to be the longest 6 miles of my life.

As I hit the beach path, I got more negative. I couldn't get a good breath, my music on Pandora sucked, and there were too many people out for a leisurely walk on the path. And wait a minute...what's that feeling? Are my legs really chaffing in this skirt? FML

I saw my friend Gunnar running past the other direction and took the opportunity to stop and talk. Luckily he was sucking wind as bad as I was so no need for him to talk some smack about how bad I looked, and how slow I was going. I begged for him to tell me it felt better with the wind at his back. He shrugged and said, nope. Awesome.

Even more awesome: I forgot to stop my Garmin for our chat. So now it looked like I was running a 14 minute mile. If you don't know this by now, I am a slave to that Garmin, and what it says holds the entire value of my life. So of course I had to start hauling ass so it could get back down and reflect the pace I was really keeping. Love that about me.

I turned around at 3 miles, expecting to feel the wind push me back to my friend’s house like I was flying effortlessly. Clearly that's not what happened. Instead, my knee started to hurt. Bad. I needed something to change; to regroup, if for anything to at least be able to make it back and finish this god awful run. I stopped to get some water, try out a few of my fancy chiropractor ordered stretches to help my knee, and change the shitty song on my phone.

And just then, the next song that played, was a new theme song of mine: Fly, by Nicki Minaj and Rhianna. Oh hells to the yeah. I got a little strut in my step and took off. My knee hurt, everything hurt, but I was on a mission to finish.

"but when you go hard your nay's become yea's"

I pushed it back, and it still sucked. My nay never really became a yea...but they can’t all be gems. Some of the stuff we do has to suck, so that when something good and magical happens we can truly appreciate it.

Even a shitty, crappy, terrible run feels a million times better than not going at all. And so that is what I will take from it.

Silver lining bitches!!!!!