My May Runstreak & A Run(317) PR

May Runstreak

Run(317) Ambassadors on the Circle

I woke up Sunday, May 1st and decided to try a runstreak for the month of May.  A runstreak, for those of you who don't know, is running at least one mile every day for the length of the streak.  I follow other runners online who've done runstreaks of various lengths, but I've never attempted one.  Every time I think about it, I'm daunted by the idea of all the laundry that would go with it.

Normally I run three or four days a week, depending on what else I have going on.  But I was coming off a bad few weeks, and I decided to challenge myself to get out and run every day in May.  But not just run, I also wanted to make each day's run different in some way - different route, place, type of run, etc.  And I wanted to document each run in a different and interesting way.

Mini Marathon Wrap-Up

Pic by Judi Lee

It's been a month since I blogged, but it's been a really rough month and I just needed to pull inside my turtle shell and hide for a little while.  I sort of feel like still staying there, but I know that's not good for me, so here I am again to tell you about last Saturday's 500 Festival Mini Marathon.  Physically this race went really well, but emotionally/mentally I was all over the place.

Last Monday when I got home, I thought I saw Kevin.  The neighbor was standing right in front of our mailbox while checking his own.  He was turned so I only saw him from the back, and he was wearing an olive green jacket the same color as one Kevin had.  When I saw him standing there as I was driving up the street, just for a second I thought Kevin was getting the mail and I was a little surprised he was just getting home since he usually was earlier than me.  All this flashed through my head for just a second, and then I remembered.  And it broke my heart all over again.  I pulled in the garage and ran into the house crying hysterically.

So that kind of sets the stage for the whole week leading up to the Mini.  I've just been so weepy and emotional, and then I will go run and it's that magic reset button so I'm okay for a little while, until I start falling back down.  The nightmares came back - the ones where Kevin is alive he just doesn't want to be with me anymore.  All while I was still trying to get ready for a race that's a really big deal.  (For blog readers not in the Indy area, the Mini Marathon is huge: over 28,000 people ran it this year.  Seven times the population of Canton, NC, in one race.)  I was planning my outfit and posting updates on social media, but secretly I was wishing I hadn't even signed up for the Mini this year.  I thought maybe it was still too close to the crapiversary of Kevin's death and that I should've taken a few more weeks off from racing.