Once a Runner*

This year I'm celebrating New Year's, normally my least favorite holiday of the year, by doing two of my most favorite things - hanging out with the Whitaker brothers (always an interesting endeavor, to say the very least), going to Monterey (always delicious) and running in a race in Carmel on New Year's day.

I used to run quite a bit...I even considered myself a runner, at least until I entered the credential program at Davis and my life as I knew it was not only flipped upside down but then put into a blender and pureed into a melange that really looked and tasted nothing like I remembered. I stayed away from running for that year, and the year after it, mostly because the small amount of "free" time I had was dedicated to, well, sleeping and staring off blankly...but also because running reminded me of a time when I was more in control of my life, and frankly that year of the credential program and that first year of teaching resembled anything but control.

This year one of the other teachers in the social science department decided to train for the Davis Stampede 1/2 marathon, and I decided to tag along, and he decided to invite students and other teachers, and now there is a pretty sizable group of teachers and students who are planning to run the race in February...and now I find myself actually on the verge of considering myself a runner again. It's a vicious, yet welcome cycle that I hope will stay around longer than it did last time. I find myself reading anything I can get my hands on about running, and even started an actual training log/notebook that I'm using to plan my runs (gasp!) and track how I'm feeling, injuries, etc.

I'm slow, Jesus tap-dancing Christ I'm slow. But I feel great, better than I've felt since I started the credential program, and I'm having fun. There's something about doing something difficult physically that's so rewarding, and I never realized this feeling until I became a teacher and spent most of my time thinking and grading and planning and just dealing with stuff.

It's grand.

*Title of this post stolen from the book that originally got me really into running back in 2004, Once a Runner, by John L. Parker.