Day 4,226—Noticing Progress—

 

I need to start getting up at 3 instead of 4, and I need to start going to bed at 8:30 or 9 p.m. I don’t think it is going to happen, but every morning I ended up leaving the house with still so much to do. I thought getting up over two hours before I needed to leave in the morning was enough, but it is not. Even when I wasn’t spending as much time running, it was still not enough time. I need to start reading in the morning again. I got some graphic novels at the library yesterday and thought about how and why I love picture books.

        When I first started reading, I would mainly read funny books, which is a genre that no one else I knew was into until I got much older. I devoured Calvin and Hobbes. New strips were being published when I first started reading, and I would cut out the strips and tape them in a notebook to make my own comic book from the newspaper. Now, I think about how much those books helped me learn to read because I could associate words with images and scenes, which is the main way I have always processed language. Sometimes I stare at words, and they don’t mean anything because I am not seeing the words in my mind, but the pictures in my head that they make.

Today, my leg feels somewhat better! I have been going out of my way to massage my leg and my hip, and I think it is helping. I have stopped looking for my next 100-mile run in December, which makes me a little sad, but at the same time, I have had a great running season already, and I have so much to do in the next few weeks. I want to do a special run for my birthday, and I don’t know what that is yet, but I will figure it out. Also, I just realized right now I have already run more miles than I did last year, so I am on track for having my second longest year ever! And my video of the Ozark Trail is on track to be my most viewed video ever! Not a lot but noticing progress is so important because otherwise it feels like you’re always moving backwards.