I am still running

I got up this morning to run around Greenlake with CM. It was an easy jog, and even Luke was on his best trotting behavior (he has been known to do the Luke-zilla walk around the lake, up on his hind legs scouting for squirrels and geese). Since I moved to Seattle, spinning around the lake has been a favorite jog.

At the end of the second (?) summer of bootcamp, I was talking to the Italian Sisters and one asked if I wanted to keep going. I thought she was asking if I wanted to do another loop around the lake. I did, but what she really meant was if I wanted to keep meeting in the morning to run. She didn't make it the next morning, but I spent the next several months running with her sister, her sister's friend, and another friend. We ran well into the dark mornings of Seattle winter. There was even one morning when it was rather cold and a bit icy. It took us half the drive to figure out that that wasn't running weather.

When Sara and I train for the Seattle 1/2, we usually do three loops around the lake as one of our long runs. I have a love-hate relationship with how well I know the lake--that I always think the boathouse is closer to the end than the 1/2 way point. And that there is an extra curve before you reach the homestretch. But, I love the peacefulness of the lake, and the wide path that I have to share with other crazy joggers (and baby jog stollers). Of course, I love it that others will run this path with me.

Typically, when I jog with others, I chat instead of listening to my music player. But, when I do listen to music, this is one of my fave songs about running, and about the balance of love-hate/fear-peace/hoping-being content in the moment. I leave you with Eastmountainsouth's I'm Still Running lyrics:

I am still running
running from the knowledge
that eye, that love
I am still running
running from the knowledge
from which there's no refuge

for you meant only love and love
and I felt only fear and pain
so once in Israel love came
and we were all afraid