Flex This!

Summer is here!!  Woo hoo! 

For me, summer has always been a break in routines. Sometimes it was just a day trip to the beaches at Watch Hill and sometimes it was a longer road trip.

But it always was a break in the routine of school, homework and everything else. Even as an adult, summer means change and a bit more flexibility. 

And that’s what I am going to talk about today:  finding flexibility in our running regimes. 

Some of my best runs have come when I have been forced to run in unknown terrain, new locations, uncalculated mileage. 

Of course, that required me to let go of the constant questions “the old me” would have been asking:

What was my time?

What was my pace?

How many miles?

Not enough hills I don’t think?

How on God’s green earth am I going to log this run?

Even now, I can get stressed just thinking about it. So I have to stop and go back to being the ‘new’ me, the more mature me. 

Not that I can’t slip back to the ‘old’ me in a New York minute – don’t try me!

Last year, I wrote an article called “Run Where You Are.”

In it, I expressed that one of my most memorable runs, one that brings peace and joy, happened when I broke my routine.

I was on vacation – at Nantasket Beach – and I needed to run.  It’s just part of my being. 

Since my hometown and streets were nowhere nearby, I had to step out where I was.

And that’s when I discovered that this run on the beach, back and forth, sometimes in the water, sometimes not, transported me, mesmerized me and recharged me.   I saw sea shells, smelled the ocean, and thought thoughts I hadn’t in a very long time. 

This year, I will find myself on the Cape, in New York, Wisconsin, and who knows where else.  I am still going to run – and have no idea how I will log it, or how many miles it will be – but I will do it anyway.

I am going to learn the streets, the sights, the smells, the old-fashioned way – no iPod, no fancy belts, no distractions – just me and my sneakers hoofin’ it.