Working on the theory that everyone comes into your life for a reason and that you have to be open and ready for it, I introduce:

Cindy who I met via a work related cross functional team brainstorm project. Shooting the $hit following our final meeting Wednesday night, I told her about my upcoming Boot Camp adventure over my delicious and soon to be illegal adult beverage. She asked which one I was doing and when I told her (6am at Piedmont Park) she said something along the lines of “Oh yeah, I used to be an instructor for that one. I’m going back as a student in a couple of weeks.” If I didn’t kow better, I’d have guessed someone put her up to that and there was a wee camera in a beer tap a few feet away documenting me in all my gullible glory.

Alas, it’s reality, and we made a wager on who would be kicking who’s ass. I plan to win.

Annie who is a fellow Atlanta MetBlogger and I met last night at a social to get to know our co-authors. She’s tenacious and funny and has an eerily similar background including (but certainly not limited to) the desire to participate in a sprint triathlon. This is something that remains on my list of goals, even though I’d lost sight/interest/hope/inspiration for it well over a year ago. Leave it to the universe to deliver someone to help remind me where my path is.

I don’t know that I’ll be as ready as she (who is running 11 miles today, thankyouverymuch) by the time Lanier (in May) or Callaway (in June) roll around, but damn if I’m not going to try.

Here goes nothin’, kids. You, me, friends in unexpected places and the universe givin’ me a good swift kick in my ever growing behind.

If there were an upside to working a 13 hour day, it would be the crystal clear view of my city and her in-town landmarks leaving the office. Nostalgia hopped in the passenger seat and made me stop the car to snap a picture of an old friend with my tires straddling a speed bump just outside of the parking deck. Not very ladylike.

There was a near endless string of nights I’d wait until the dark crept over the rooftops to strap on my running shoes and headphones in preparation for setting out on her streets. Nearly invisible as I thudded on the buckled sidewalks and ducked under overgrown tree limbs, I’d revel in the living that swooshed past/around/next to/nearly on top of me. Young couples in the early stages of what could be love, groups of men finding their identities and alcohol ingestion boundaries, the neighborhood character spottings and my personal game of BINGO that went with them. Noting the new graffiti or shops opening/closing or a broken fire hydrant or damage from a recent rain. The memorization of the lights and the ideal spot to cross the street to avoid being stuck at a red - all these things made her uniquely mine. No one else saw her exactly the same way I did.

I miss living in her belly.

Footnote/linkage love re BINGO: B and I, never wrote about NG or O

He didn’t mean to wake me at 5:45 when the alarm went off for golf. In fact, he didn’t. It was the faucet when he was brushing his teeth.

It’s just as well. It’s been too long since my legs were properly stretched in the early light, when bugs are exhausted and confused enough to fly smack into my face. Too long since I soaked all three layers with evidence of my adventure, since my thighs burned with the pleasure of a run, since I practiced the mastery of the just-right lace tension on the sneaks and just the right balance of the ear bud jam into the side of my noggin.

The Silver Comet taunts me. She’s long and slim lovely and perfectly smooth, but I have to drive to visit her and it makes me feel like I’m pulling the classic asshole move from LA Story. You know the one. Still, she waits for me and she welcomes my eager feet and my disjointed cadence while I struggle to find my groove again.

I’ve missed the pounding of my feet and my breath, and there’s nothing quite like that shock to the body at 7am on a Saturday to prime you for an incredible day and to set the tone for a weekend with an open heart.

An Indy Craft Fair, a lunch date with myself and yet another trashy detective novel at an old favorite haunt, a pile of friends cycling the same trail and finishing it with a BBQ? The only thing that could have made it better would have been drinks and dinner with my beau and an ice cream cone by a fountain on a warm night (followed by a FUH2 moment for J)…but I had those, too. Pictures here.

Here’s to running and riding and art and friends and love, and for that perfect moment where they all mix and explode in your chest.

This concludes your hippie love-in entry for the day.

There are days it takes everything I have to get out of bed.

There are days that a 3 mile loop and 350 feet can heal me.

I didn’t stretch well the other morning and as a result of my negligence I have shin splints.

Like many other athletes who know the positive impact a little potassium can have on breaking up the lactic acid that causes sore muscles, I reached for a banana. Then I cut it up, put it on vanilla ice cream and slathered it with chocolate syrup.

What?

The hoofing / cycling to work has taken a backseat to other priorities, my evenings have been gobbled up by a myriad of pressing items and I’ve struggled to find time for myself - until this morning.

Out of the bed at 6 and still bleary eyed as I plugged up the shuffle and tied my shoes, I was back on my familiar buckled streets in the safety of the dark where no one can watch and laugh. Where it’s me and the air and the music and the memories and the fanciful thoughts that come from no where when you let yourself wander.

I missed watching my shadow on the still cool pavement, I missed making up stories for the people in the cars who pass me, oblivious to my presence. I missed the tautness in my belly when I hold my head up high and my shoulders back. I missed the trees at this time of the year, hanging low over the sidewalk and the way it always prompts a thought of Phantom - keep your hand at the level of your eyes – my defense against the webs hanging, waiting for a meal.

So caught up in the daily rush-rush, I’ve strayed from my inventory…from my priorities and from the things that bring me closer to Happy.

Fifty minutes of small steps, one giant leap for Maighkind.

I slept like shit last night.

The tail end of my dreams had me somewhere in Alaska, seven hours from home (Anchorage) by car with $15 in my pocket to fund the trip and some guys laying in the gutter of the on-ramp with assault weapons trying to sell me a bottle of beer for $12 as safe passage. The last thing I remember before I woke up was trying to convince a man hovering over me with a beard that a bottle of clear nail polish in my purse was worth $6, and him telling me it was from a drugstore and worth $1.28.

I was hoping for better dreams.

For probably only the second time in six months I made time for myself last night, strapping on the running shoes and setting out for 1:55. It’s a much different route than I used to take, traversing through the neighborhoods between here and the park, weaving through The Path and the buckled paving stones that - once decorative and practical - are now a knee hazard.

It’s been too many weeks since I admired the skeleton trees against sporadic grey clouds, and far too long since the heat helped me work up a sweat.

This is the first winter that I’ve curled in on myself and thought of the temperature as “too cold, I don’t want to be out there” or of the late sprint “too warm, I don’t want to be out there” as if I was Goldilocks and talking about porridge. In near tandem I’ve grown increasingly intolerant of the noise a singular car can make and even the volume of the birds that wake me.

I’m irritable and tired, and it has everything to do with not running.

After an incredibly unfortunate trip with the girls to a local shop to try on swim wear for our annual trip south in two weeks, I finally put 1 and 1 and 1 and 1 and 1 together and made 5+ pounds that I’ve packed on since my treaded lover and I parted ways.

So I ran, and I walked, and I found the peace again.

I’d forgotten the high my little treks bring. I’d forgotten the cleansing. I’d mistaken our falling-out for a falling-in and reclaimed a bit of myself with a bit of my health.

My calves are sore this morning, which will be nothing compared to the dose of lactic acid lock-up tomorrow has in store. My ass, now perched happily on a padded cafe chair on the patio in my bathrobe with a jumbo citronella candle lit a foot below attempting to keep the skeeters off the legs connected to said ass is begging me to find another way. I won’t, this is it.

It’ll never be about the marathons or crossing the finish line first in a 5k, it will always be (I hope) about the movement and the solitude and rewarding my body and mind for being so good to me.

The birds are getting loud again - which is less a signal to pull out a BB gun and more a sign I need to get in the shower and start my day in earnest, washing away the bad dreams and the smell of sleep and the remnants of pillow drool.

Happy Monday, babies - kissy boo!