Back in the Saddle Again...

Yeah, occasionally, I sing old, bad country (or maybe it's good country and I sing it badly... you choose!). Anyway, the point is that I ran 7 miles this morning. 7 S.L.O.W. miles, but I did it. I'm seriously considering adopting a new speed philosophy: I need to be faster than the cut off time. Both the Princess Half and the Zooma Half had minimum pace requirements of 16 min/mile. I'm running in the mid 11 to low 12's, so that's faster than 16. Which is good! Mainly because if I'm not injured or barfing, I would really prefer to cross the finish line under my own power. That being said, I know I won't settle for aiming at 12ish, so I'm going to aim faster, but be happy with slower This morning, I remembered why I run. I woke up too early, considering I didn't have to go to work. I got out of bed, and flipped on the news (ok, it's 2012, I went on the computer), and saw the headlines about the shooting in Colorado at the midnight show of Batman. I didn't know how to react. I've been to midnight shows of geeky movie premiers (Star Trek in the early 90s, 2 of the 3 LOTR series), and my hubby seriously considered going to Batman. These were "my people" who were targeted, hurt and even killed. I cried a bit, hugged my kids a bit extra, then angrily pulled on my running clothes. I turned on the iPod a bit too loud and went out. At just over a mile, I felt it. That release when you can move past feeling helpless. Where you can be sad but not let it consume you. It's not really running away from life, it's more like running into life.