Day 9

Three more days...

It's rainy and I'm giving this cold the final shove, hopefully, so I jogged on the treadmill for an hour, I guess about 6ish miles. No burning plastic smell and now I feel really good.

Part of me wants to change the batteries in the treadmill so that I can have all the numbers, but I am also appreciating all the things I'm noticing without the numbers, particularly with my form. I passed the time tweaking this and that, trying to get things feeling really nice and easy. And, for a few minutes here and there, particularly around 21 minutes and from 43-49 minutes (yes, I retained some of the numbers, just a stopwatch), I felt so efficient. The run was easy anyway, I was hardly breathing any more than while walking, but during the special intervals, I felt like I was hardly moving. It was lovely. I'm not sure if this was due to endorphin release or a slight tilt of upper body or some other physiological adjustment.

And this has helped me realize what I want out of running. Yeah, I would like to run faster because that is what I'm supposed to want--definitely, I adore the idea of getting somewhere before someone else--but once I came here and struggled on the hills that will likely make me faster, I started to pine instead for those long easy runs that I can't get here. Basically, I want to jog around and get to places without much effort!