Running is my mental dashboard

Ok. So I took my little Luke out for a 2.5 mile stroll today (Sunday). I was observing him while I was running. Watching him take it all in. First we ran along the water, watching the boats & the people. Then we stopped to see the dogs at the dog park. Then we ran around Battery Park and worked our way back to the swings so Luke could play while I could cool off.

But while Luke & I were running, I saw a similarity between the curiousity of a little kid and that of a runner. When Luke is looking around, he's learning things for the first time. Calibrating thoughts and taking everything in afresh. Only when I run to I feel like I do the same thing. Running is my mental dashboard. It's my thinking time when I generate thoughts, ideas for work. Or have more macro thoughts about my life, my family, my job, my goals. Occasionally it serves as my life's to do list or my days to do list. My thought process can be as macro or micro as I want it to be. But seldom do I have a time when I can just go out there & think. And that's what I love about running. If only I had more time to do it.

Fortunately my running isn't as slow as my blogging

I've been pretty bad recently with my blogging. Its tough to keep up. Running is such a great routine & ritual to it, that it's not something that you want to spend too much time writing about. I used to write in my nikerunning.com personal diary, but that outlined what shoes I used, how many miles I ran, what the weather was like, what my pace was, etc. That was more of the factual information I needed to know to ensure that I didn't run myself into the ground. This is more self-reflective, which is always more difficult to write about.

Ok, I think the verbal diarrhea above is sufficient enough to fool people into thinking I wrote in my post. Kidding.

Here is my thought of the day. Running is a very personal thing. What you seek to accomplish, what you actually accomplish, what you are thinking about while doing it, how you feel, etc. Its typically peformed in the public domain but seldom shared in the public domain. Every runner has their own stories, their own experiences but you couldn't identify what they are just from looking at them. That is why I like the blog, you can express your inner-runningness & you can learn from the wisdom of other runners.