In The Chase. The sensations of running.

Sweat drips like a waterfall and I'm breathing heavily.  I'm trying to escape the pressures of the world and the demons in my mind.  I'm running away from them and toward my dreams.  Toward my goals.  With each step I feel them loosening their grip on me, breaking forward and exploring new places in the world.  Finding out what else I'm capable of. 

I'm older now, and I'm aware that I used to be able to run longer and faster.  Still, I can't stop myself from trying to get back to that place.  The one where I kept running for me, because it gave me the confidence to be myself.  I'm running up and down hills, near small houses and large.  I run through the farmlands, I run on the pavement of the streets and sidewalks.  I keep pushing myself, keep driving my legs and body forward and onward.  I don't want to give up because I don't want to stay still.  I need to continue moving in the right direction and doing the things that make me happy, and this is one of them.

I don't always run, but I find that running opens me up the most.  When I feel my lungs burst and my legs churn with every step, I feel something primal, as though it was something I was always meant to do in some capacity.

However to get to this apex of emotional feeling, you must endure some stress, and perhaps in some context, some pain. 

To start a run for me, requires a good bit of energy.  I don't wake up spry, feeling like I can take on the day.  I wake up, and either want coffee or to go back to bed. 

My warm up usually includes me listening to some kind of song that I've hooked on to that excites me and pacing madly around the house looking for my ear buds that I probably misplaced from the night before.  A little stretching so that I don't pull or twist anything, and then I'm off.  Usually the paths are familiar, but every now and then I like to put in a little twist to extend the run or to explore another part of the area. 

I've gotten in the habit of mapping and saving the runs to my smartphone to give me feedback.  This helps me with judging my pace and whether I can reasonably pick it up, as well as monitor how often I've run in the past few weeks or months.  It will be pretty interesting to see where all the numbers lie as the year progresses and things such as snow and the elements begin to have an effect. 

When I run, my mind wanders back and forth about things.  About my life in general, back to the road in front of me and everywhere in-between.  Sometimes I don't think at all and just listen to whatever is playing on my headphones, losing myself in the rhythms and words of Eminem or The Record Company or whatever else is inspiring me for the day.

In the middle of the run, or sometimes near the end, I imagine that I'm being chased, maybe by a dog or a person.  Every now and then I'm more creative and think it might be a mountain lion that springs out from the woods or a bear.  It helps to keep me pressing on the pace and to realize that I may have more in my tank.

There's something about the completion of a run that seems to set me up though for the rest of the day.  A feeling that I've somehow already beaten my toughest physical task and that from here on out everything will be a simple mental test of can you do it or not.

For others it might be time spent in the gym, lifting weights or doing yoga, and I've tried nearly all of them, but the simplicity of running just appeals to me more.  I feel like I'm moving almost with the Earth itself, becoming part of the world around me rather than a feeling of being stationary and unable to move.

In life, sometimes that's what it feels like the most.  This inability to move from one situation to another, as though you're stuck in mud and something is holding you back.  While I run, it feels like I'm constantly breaking those chains and getting out of the muck.  It's a sense of freedom that is unlike anything else.