mile nine

I have been lax in my posting, but what else is new? Nothing has really been happening since Houston and I have been keeping busy with my dietetic internship, so posting has fallen by the wayside in favor of getting a run in. Some days it is hard to make myself do anything when I am done at the hospital, partly because I’m tired and partly because of the options I have for running routes near where I am living. In reality, I am not THAT tired and in the interest of getting out and doing something, I have a little bit of a running streak started. I’ve run every day for the past 15 days. Just short runs (3-6 miles), but enough to be relaxing and motivating to get outside each day. I am not one to wax too poetic about one thing or another, but I have become a lot more appreciative of running as my own personal quiet time in the past couple of months. It is so good to have some time set aside for yourself to be alone and not staring at a screen or around other people and just think about whatever you want, or think about nothing if you can manage.

The days are starting to get longer, which is a definite improvement. All my runs have been so short because I generally leave my apartment, cross one street, and then run on one continuous sidewalk until I get to the hospital where I am interning. The hospital is two miles away. If I want to run three miles, my turnaround point is just after I run across an overpass – so I can usually make myself continue to the two mile mark before turning around in the interest of not having to turn around and immediately run back uphill to cross the overpass again. Easy choice – run a little further and put off the uphill return for a few minutes. Once I get to the two mile mark, I can again either turn around and head home or I can cross the street and run a lap around the hospital which tacks on a little less than a mile. It took me a while to figure that out, but since I did, it’s a lot easier to force myself to just tack some extra hospital laps onto my run especially because it’s so much quieter than running along the road home. So far I have been lucky not to see anyone I know while doing this.

I have major race envy, but also very little extra cash to sign up for distances I can easily run for free like 5k, 10k, etc. I want to find some cheap/local-ish half marathons to run in the spring and have a very itchy marathon-registration-finger for something sooner than the fall, but I have not found “the one” yet.

My internship is 26 weeks long and I just finished the ninth week, so there is your marathon metaphor right there. Far in enough to be invested, but if you are feeling tired now, you are probably going to see some ugly moments before you hit 26. Happily, I am really enjoying it and finish each day mostly (MOSTLY) feeling good. The time is going by quickly and sometimes that is the best thing you can ask for. Yesterday was a really good day, so I’m feeling a little more warm fuzzies than are probably typical of my day to day. I am not a “people person” at all, but the people are definitely my favorite part. Of course, that does not apply to every single person, but sometimes having one patient who is particularly friendly, interesting, or memorable will make my entire day. I’ll eventually get yelled at by someone and become a misanthrope, but for now it’s okay. I do spend a bit of time daydreaming about life post-internship.

When I got back to Crawford last night, I had this rad surprise from Brooks. Actually, it was not at all a surprise because Brian told me I had a package here two weeks ago and other IDers have been posting pics of their shirts for weeks as well, but I do love tearing my little hands into some mail. My sweaty post run hair+camera phone pic combo is a little rough, but I did spare you the side of my face with crackhead acne on it or the version of the pic where my dogs were doing some inappropriate licking in the background.

Okay, bye! Hopefully see you sooner than later.