Joy and Woe.

My alarm went off at 8am today.

I looked up in my skylight and it was grey. Looked like rain.

I didn't have to work.

I didn't have to be anywhere.

But I had an appointment with my running shoes.

It takes a lot of motivation for me to forfeit sleep for miles of sweat and side stitches.

Most people don't get it.

But my motivation today was Quenton Cassidy.

Cassidy is a miler in this book I'm reading called "Once a Runner."

I read it before I go to bed, hoping that something will stick with me until morning, and convince me to get my butt in gear and run in the morning. It worked today.

"Quenton Cassidy knew what the mystic-runners, the joggers, the runner-poets, the Zen runners, and others of their ilk were talking about. But he also knew that their euphoric selves were generally nowhere to be seen on dark, rainy mornings. They marily wanted to talk it, not do it."

I don't want to be a runner who runs because it feels good. I want to focus on my pace, I want to be uncomfortable. I want to breathe hard, I want to sweat. I love running the most in the last 40o of a 5K. When everything in me wants to quit, but I don't.

I want to be more than a runner. I want to be competitive.

"The true competitive runner, simmering in his own existenctial juices...ran because it grounded him in basics. There was both life and death in it; it was unadulterated by media hype, trivial cares, political meddling. He suspected it kept him from that most real variety of schizophrenia...Running to him was real; the way he did it the realest thing he knew. It was all joy and woe, hard as diamond; it made him weary beyond comprehension. But it also made him free."

So, now you've met my running partner, Quenton Cassidy.

He's in my head when I'm running, he gets me up in the morning. He makes me so excited for Cross Country.