Back in January, I received a wonderful email from a woman named Susan. She was writing to tell me that she had just started running and while looking for inspiration she had come across my blog. She made a comment in the email about wondering if she was “built” for the whole running thing.
In my response to her, I made the analogy that building a running life is just like building a house. We need to lay a good strong foundation, pick a design that works for for each of us individually, and make the framework solid. Then we can mix and match to suit our styles – change the wall color, change the flooring – whatever we want. Sometimes things break during the building process, and that’s ok…because as long as we tend to the leak before the roof caves in, we can still keep building. If we don’t tend to the leak, we may have to postpone the project longer than we wanted to or worse, start rebuilding from the ground up.
I have recently found myself strengthening my weakened foundation.
Over the past year, it was all I could do to maintain the rough framework of my running ‘house.’ At the end of May, I began to thicken the layers, slowly adding pieces back on. Twelve weeks in to the process, and I’m beginning to resemble the runner I used to know. I’ve still got lots of construction ahead of me, but I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and swing the hammer a little harder.
I hope you can take your time building *your* house and make your love affair with running last a lifetime. Be inspired by other ‘home owners’ – but don’t get caught in the trap of comparing yourself to others. You do what you can do, do what’s right for your ‘home’ and the rest will fall in to place.
