One Day...

One day. One day my life changed. I went from having a permanent job working nights in Santa Barbara to not. In one day my life changed. It changed from having a nice apartment, to contacting my travel staffing agency for another job. One day I realized that I would no longer be staying in the LA area that much longer, forced to live on a budget til a new job is found, and life thrown to a sudden halt. It was one day.

That day/week I came to realize that I had taken a lot of things for granted. I had thought that I would be staying in the LA area forever so I hadn't taken the chance to explore everything I wanted to. My boyfriend and I scattered to see things that I wanted to see and do. I realized that I would be taking a job ANYWHERE in the country for 13 weeks, another wrench thrown into a once almost seamless plan. My agency found me a job 2200 miles away in Iowa til Christmas which was 1) good cause at least I would have insurance and money 2) bad cause I'm moving from everything that I loved and great to love. About 1 week before all this, I had also started up with training with @coachprs and @dianeprs for training again. One day and everything came to a halt.

What did I do? I went running. I remember being so upset; feeling that I had caused this situation some how. I was now running over at my boyfriend's-he lives by this awesome trail. So I started out and it was terrible. My whole body hurt and my legs felt like lead. The first 10 minutes I'm not even sure you could even say was a jog but say my legs started to get into gear, they loosened up. I kept going. By the end of that run, I felt great.

You see..I was going to run the LA RNR and Santa Barbara Marathon relay with friends...all that out the window. For me that was a great disappointment. I am running the RNRLV for the ACS with @determination and was worried how I was going to get all that worked out.
After that run, on that day, LA and Santa Barbara didn't matter to me anymore. Some how I knew things would work out.

Some may read this and say "big deal" but for me it was. But the thing that saved me and continues to is my running. It's my therapy. Sure, now I have to work on a long distance relationship with a man that I love dearly and it breaks my heart that he's not here with me but it's not the end of the world either. My life could be a lot worse. I still can run; I still can run for cancer-that's what motivates me on my really bad days cause even when I think I have it bad, I always remember there is someone else who is worse.

It was time off..

So it's been awhile but there was a reason and purpose. I, somewhere along the line, had lost the love and passion for running. From a teammate of mine, Ian (ndpalmer97), I decided to loose the Garmin, heart rate monitor, Ipod, and just go out and run. No time defined, effort defined run. Just me and my surroundings. I got to rediscovered alot of things that I realized I had lost. I have been living in Carpinteria, CA for almost 2 months at this time and had not taken in the "true" beauty of the area: the foothills back by the high school, running in the various small neighborhoods and seeing different decor that I am not familiar with. I actually noticed how quite it was out. Even if I ran at 9 am when business were up and running you still could hear all the creatures making their every noise.

My boyfriend decided to go out with me one run and he found this path that I didn't know exsist. As we ran along it, I got to see dolphins playing in the ocean; and I'm not talking 2...there were 4 or 5. We also ventured up to the Seal Santuary that is a protected area. Although we didn't see any seals, it was a specatular view. I wish I would have had my phone to take a picture of it. Nothing can describe it...next time.

This past month I have rediscovered my love of running. Brandon (@ironbrandon) and Ian have helped me with that. I have joined up with the PRS team: best coaches that I know @coachprs and @dianeprs will help me with a new goal. I'm running the Rock and Roll Half Marathon in Las Vegas in Decemeber and am so excited about it. Even in my time off I spent time in the pool and because of that I am entertaining the idea of participating in the Boulder 70.3.

All of this just because I had a month off of true training. It totally made a difference for me and I am thankful for every minute of it.

TM :)