A year in trainers: the runniversary

I knew this date was coming and yet I  couldn’t write the post. Someone recently said ‘that it means that much to you’.

And it does. I slept horribly before my weekend run and longed to stay in bed but didn’t. I never do. I have to go and yet I am dead nervous every time I get ready to go. That’s three times a week meaning more than 150 tummy aches. Chunky sporter’s calves. Sore muscles. Heat stroke. Who cares? The first quarter I’m cursing and wishing to turn right back. But I don’t. I go when it’s raining, when’s it windy, when it’s cold, when it’s dark. I run when it easy but more importantly when it’s hard. When I have nothing, feel like nothing, when I’m lost, when I’m out for the count. Sometime I’m euphoric and high as a kite when I get back. Sometimes I feel that way in the last quarter and you can see it because I have a goofy Cheshire cat smile plastered on my face and more oft than not a few choice song texts and hand gestures are thrown into the mix. Simply because I feel alive again. That is what running means to me; to live. To live with body, heart and soul. Etched on my pulse but felt in my veins when I run. That place where it doesn’t matter what hurts and trust me I'm on flats duty for a reason. Only that I feel life and there I find me. 

The person left exhausted after one-minute sessions on the track a year ago, is not me today. Broken, hurt and lost. Shy, insecure, closed. Not to mention with absolutely no love and drive for exercise and ditto physical condition. While my body is sore and stiff at the minute and making running harder, this woman is a beast albeit a pretty one (wink). I feel strong because I am physically strong. The lungs that often needed those inhalators are the ones that greedily breath it all in, from the rain to the cows in the pasture (OK, not my favourite..). Every day I work to be strong, to run, to live. That strength gave me vision. To see myself differently, to see beyond my flaws to the core. To see turned into liking what I see and that became to love what I see in me. And because I see me, not as a shadow or a role but as myself changed everything. I would have evolved this year, not matter what but running allowed me grow into the me I want to be. Not perfect, not that much less shy but a whole lot less insecure and closed. Above all I choose to get lost. To lose myself in those I love. In that which I love. In my running. Because that is where I find me again. 

When I look in the mirror, and I was recently teased that I do that quite a bit, I more often than not smile. I smile where I grimaced at my flaws, my hang-ups, my scars, my edges. I see what I built, minute by minute till minutes became hours. When I run, there she is again. When I run, nothing else matters, all of it just falls away. Time doesn’t stop, I do. I feel like gold in the fire, impurities melted, doubts diminished. When I run, I become molten, flushed with feeling and life and I am perfectly imperfect. I find a beast, a woman, a girl, mom, a lover, a beauty, a geek, a human. All of me, together. I find that in my trainers. A year in trainers taught me to live.

P.S. the pictures are of Sunday bake mode. Triple citrus cupcakes with white chocolate lime frosting. So bad, so good and an extra reason to run..

140 grams of fine crystal sugar, 140 grams of patent flour, 120 grams of softened butter get whipped to an inch of it’s life. Then in goes two large eggs, a tablespoon of lime juice, a tablespoon of lemon juice (fresh bio), a half teaspoon of citrus extract and a half a teaspoon of vanilla paste. I add one to two tablespoons of whole (lactose free) milk till it’s still thick but spoonable. I typically let my cupcakes sit for ten minutes before baking for 18 minutes at 175 Celsius in a fan oven. When cooled I melted 75 grams of white chocolate (still looking for lactose free chocolate), a few drops of key lime extract and little more fresh lime juice and as much (lactose free) liquid whipping cream till it's thick and rich. Mika's first words in the morning...'where's  my cupcake?'