The Wicked Googly

It's not often that I blog twice in one day. But my body has had me doing nothing but sleeping, sitting and thinking today.

Yesterday, I was out running with my friend Dave on the Kalamazoo River Valley Trail. We tend to start from the trail head of the trail, but this time, we took a bit of a different route, since we ran from his house to the trail.

On the way back, during this super slow run, we passed the 1.5 mile marker and I said "remember when we used to turn around right here?"

I logged my first activity in my running experiment just over a year ago, on March 25, 2012. It was 2.1 miles at 34 minutes. I suppose the good news is that I can do about 3 miles in that time frame now.

But when I first started, I had no idea that I would still be doing it today, let alone training for a half marathon. I am still super slow and my goal for the half marathon is to finish.

I expected to be doing something much different this year. My plan did not include running either short OR long distances. It didn't include running 8 miles yesterday or 13 miles this coming weekend. It didn't necessarily involve me going to school right now or living by myself (well, with Dakota by ourselves).

And as I thought about what could have been or something I had wanted in the past, I know that those things are still options. But while the story of my life is not over, the plot has taken a wicked googly on to a path that I didn't necessarily see coming.

But, it's ok. Why? Because there are now some other things that are beginning to fall into place. They may be unexpected things, but they are opportunities to be taken.

I have no doubt that as I run my 13 mile run this coming weekend, that I'll be thinking about the things that could have been, the things to come in the future , the things I need to change and the things that have changed in the last year.