Last night

There is something about the sound of your feet hitting the road, the smell of fresh air, seeing deer playing frogger in front of you with college kids speeding around RIT, leaves falling, hearing your breath inhaling and exhaling and becoming one with the road. Running is no longer a chore, but an experience for me. For so long, I would run and not enjoy it. It would literally be a chore, where I wouldn't look forward to it, didn't like it while I was doing it, then hated the soreness afterwards. Now, I get eager to put on the shoes and headphones and take that first step. Its a challenge everyday to overcome cramps, soreness, stiffness and aches. Once you overcome those, and know you can run through them, you learn a lot about yourself. You never truly know how strong your willpower is until your on a 15 mile run, and over the course of the run, you overcome mini hurdles and challenges and in the end, you finished, you did it.
Last night was an easy 6 mile tempo run, that turned out to be a negative split day where in the end, I just wanted to run as fast as I could. Those are the training days you love. When your legs respond and you don't want to end. If I could have kept going I would have. Those are the days you want to hold on to and remember in your mind the next time you have the day you want to stop.