When I showed up at our little clubhouse here at the Lodge (our current apartment complex) for my afternoon workout I was greeted with the sound-blasting news report of a woman recently murdered in the area. Instinctually I glanced up at the TV set to see her photo as the news reporter rattled off the detail that this woman has two surviving teenage children. My headphones were in my ears and my music was already playing, but it wasn't loud enough (apparently there was a hard-of-hearing resident in the workout area who needed the volume to be at its maximum capacity) to drown out the reporting of this tragedy. I turned my ipod up in an effort to wage war with the bombardment of more bad news...but the words kept seeping through. Death...car bomb...trial...and each time I would feel this gravitational pull to look up at the bad-news-bearing-screen.
I had to run hard today. I had to run hard so that I could stop thinking about the tragedies. I had to run hard so that I was forced to focus on one thing - placing one foot in front of the other on that freaking treadmill. When I've pushed myself to run hard in the past, more often than not it was a form of self-punishment. Not today. Today it was being kind to myself to run until it hurt and I could simply be in my body and not in my head. Self care came in the form of running my ass off today. Literally.
No comments:
Post a Comment