This last week, several different situations hit me really hard emotionally. All three things were totally outside my control. My first reaction to each situation was to RUN.
In the past, when I was hit hard by life or dealt a bad hand, I would want to go home. I would want to hole myself up in my house and watch endless hours of crap TV. And of course with watching TV comes eating loads of crap. Crappy situation= Crap TV + Crap food. But this week, I was able to react much differently.
Thursday morning, I got some devastating news about a student. The first thing I wanted to do was run. Later that day, I found out I didn’t get a job position I wanted. Now my feet were practically dancing to get out of there. All day I knew I had boxing class ahead of me and a 4 mile run. So I was able to compartmentalize (well….not totally but much better than in the past) and make my body and mind wait until the appropriate time for an outlet. Not that it was easy but I was really proud of my response.
This is how I know I’m becoming a legit runner. Running now allows me to zone out, be at peace and move! So when life is too noisy, I find the quiet in running. Boxing and Running are now my happy place, instead of in front of a TV, shoveling cheese doodles into my face. I’m now realizing, in the past, to feel like I got control, I would just be more out of control. To deal with a huge amount of stress or grief, I would let my eating get out of control and my laziness. That doesn’t even make any sense! But I thought it made me feel better. I didn’t ever realize that I was just creating a never ending cycle.
Now, my instinct is to better myself by controlling my body and mind and it feels SO much better. After I got back from my run, I got the news that my second hometown had been hit by a tornado, leaving several of my past students homeless. Instead of the news ramping me back up to where I felt out of control, I was able to absorb the news a lot better, make phone calls and really look at the situation objectively. While I was hurting from three sources of devastating news, I was able to keep going and not crawl into a hole like I usually would because I had already had that meditation time. 
I feel like this last few of my posts have been total DUH moments. These are all reasons that I’ve heard why other people run. There has been nothing I’ve written lately that I haven’t heard before. But the difference is now I’m actually experiencing it. I hear runners say “the zone”, “I can’t wait to run”, “I love to run” all the time but I never actually believed it was true. I guess it’s just one of those things you have to figure out for yourself.
Today: 5-6 Mile run.
Tomorrow: 7+ Miles, Post: Things I’ve Learned Running #2