Somewhere Between Cherry Street and Tattnall Park

True confession: I steal all my pictures from Pinterest :)

That's where you can find me five days out of the week, mostly in the dead of afternoon, hair half plastered to the side of my face and half pulled up in a high ponytail. Rocking the Nike shorts, my pride and joy Brooks (saved about $40 on them this summer at AJC's Peachtree Road Race aka baller), and a frat tank. Jamming out to a mixture of middle school era rap songs, good ole country, and of course Mister John Mayer. I am out there pounding the pavement with my trusty running partner, MB and loving every minute of it. Crazy. I know. But I think the essence of running is very much interwoven in the fiber of my soul. So deep. I know.

In all seriousness, running is what I like to call the purest part of my day. Though I do get some alone time during the day, I am not very drawn to seek it out (I'm like 95% extroverted here, people) and quite frankly, am too over-scheduled to demand it for myself. So the hour or so (let's be real, there's a lot of so added to that hour haha) I take to run five miles is the time I get to be inside my head and at the same time outside of it. I like to joke that it is the cheapest form of therapy, and for me it quite literally is. Though I naturally like to talk out loud--and God bless my friends they get to be on the receiving end of this habit--I think I need this time to talk inside my head too. One of my best friends wrote me a letter this summer before I left for India and in it said something to the effect of don't be afraid to ask the tough questions and don't be disappointed when you don't get an answer. I think that is a lot like my relationship to running. Maybe the question I am asking is how to study harder/how to make more time out of my day/how to solve a friend problem/how to get into grad school and I am met smack dab in the middle of the street with an reverberating GO RUN. And I never find the easy answer out there, nor do I want to. I think there is something so unadulterated about my time out there, and I do not want it to become a crutch to fixing everything. But it certainly is the best part of my day, and I feel much better (sweatier) afterwards. 

Running has always been a common love between my mother and I, and I am forever grateful she turned me on to the passion. We hunt down races months in advance and plan our family vacations around them (spoiler alert: we're training for a half in Nashville in the spring!). I am so glad we have between us a bond that nobody else can really get. This weekend she is hosting her cross country team's meet...and I ask for all your prayers for her! She is an amazing person and is putting her whole heart into this weekend. I could not be prouder. Love you.

Happy running (and if you're not yet, let me take you out sometime!)
K