You know, yesterday was the first race I've run in 18 months. EIGHTEEN MONTHS. Sometimes I'm baffled that I let it all go on so long - the making excuses, the wallowing in depression, the consulting a pile of french fries as to what I should do in moments of stress. All of it.

Just the same, when it took me only 10 minutes to get to the first mile marker yesterday morning at the Shamrock Shuffle, I knew I was back. Maybe a 10-minute mile is no shakes for some of you, but it was a shocker for me. So much so, that tears sprung to my eyes and I had to try and compose myself to keep from crying like a big fricking baby down Grand Avenue.

It's been a long, long eighteen months.

Now, granted, I didn't keep that pace for the entire five miles - I'm not stupid and not in that great of shape - but I managed to average out 12-minute miles for the duration. No kidding - it took me exactly 1:00.16 to finish. I can't begin to tell you what a shocker that turned out to be, as I was just shooting to cross the finish line without stopping. I did both, and I managed not to embarrass myself in the process.

Although I just woke up - at 5 a.m. - with the worst pain in my back. My hips are hollering too. Thank God for yoga tonight.

One of the hardest things about letting myself get out of shape was knowing that when I picked back up it wouldn't be from where I left off. I wouldn't be as fit and as athletic as I was when my life hit the pothole that it did. That knowledge sucked, and it kept me from taking better care of myself so many times. Yesterday I read, on the back of someone's shirt of all places, this phrase:

"The miracle is that I had the courage to start in the first place."

That is kind of how I feel right now. It does, and continues to be the case, take a lot of brow-beating to get me to stop feeling sorry for myself. I can wallow like nobody's business. And for as good of reasons as I've had these past 18 months to be upset, and deal with my feelings over a gin and tonic or seven, it had to stop. It just did. We've all seen what pain and sorrow and shame and guilt can do to people if they get a chance to burrow down deep, and I don't want that to be my reality.

I'm not saying that finishing a five-mile foot race on a beautiful Sunday morning in March is the cure-all, but it's certainly a nice start.

The rest of my weekend was peppered with random niceties - coffee with an old coworker from the magazine; Jenni and Lissette's new puppy, Charlie; an impromptu puppy play date; hearing Anne Lamott speak at Lookingglass with my friend Jen; new brakes on JoJo the Wonder Scion; barbecue and comic books with The Boy as soon as he arrived home from being away all weekend with his friends ... the list goes on. The race was the biggest.

Now it's Monday morning and I'm already plotting what my next race will be, how I'm hoping that I'm feeling a little less sore by tomorrow night so that kickboxing will be doable, and mainly just being thankful for having gotten through it all.

Posted by Erin at 11:56 AM | filed under: Inspiration