Thursday, November 19, 2009

my saving grace

I am tired.

I wake up every day (after my alarm has gone off about six times), go to school (which is inevitably getting harder), sit in my office hours as a TA (do you even know how many students don't read the syllabus?), go to work (...well, at least they feed me. sometimes.), then come home and study for hours on end (depending on how many tests I happen to have that week) until I fall asleep.

Except that I left out my favorite part.

Running.

Running has become my saving grace (or at least...one of them). No matter how much tension I have built up in my neck or how badly I want to just cry (sometimes. not every day.), running always makes me feel better. At least until I start studying again. Ha.

I found early on in the semester that attempting to get up at 6:30am and go running didn't work very well. At least for me. No one's ever accused Katie Sparks of being a morning person.

So, a few weeks ago, I started running directly after I got home from work. And it was wonderful. The weather had finally cooled down to the point where I could do that and not die of heat exhaustion.

Then it started getting dark early. And I kept running. When Jason and Jerod found out that I was running while it was dark, they decided to make it their personal mission to make sure I didn't run by myself at night. I'm sure my dad will be eternally grateful to them. So now I have running buddies.

At first, I wasn't sure how I would like that, since trying to talk while I'm running has never been a strong suit of mine. But it's so fun. I love it. My favorite is when we've been running a while and one of them says something to make me laugh. It comes out as sort of a wheez-laugh-wheez-laugh while I'm half-running, half-falling over, which only makes me wheez-laugh-wheez-laugh harder because it's such a funny predicament. I can only imagine what people driving by are thinking as they see "that special girl" running down the block.

Moral of the Story:

I am inexpressibly grateful that Thanksgiving break is next week.

Moral of the Story #2:

Please don't throw rocks at me while I'm running.