sun shining like falling rain

 I've been  off the grid for a while, clandestine and as silent as a spy. The emotional and physical toll at the end of the school year causing my mind to skate over the surface of things, paralysing. I was too tired to think much beyond sleep, work and sleep. There has been some running, as sporadic as a shotgun blast but no blogging. Non essentials shelved in the name of survival.

Yesterday my holiday starts. I enter woods as cool and dark as a cathedral and I am Benedictine in my approach, silent, solitary and contemplative. I bend to my run with purpose my blood singing hymns to the earth. This is a run with intent, a shackle breaker and I go hard in the heat, every stride breaking another negative link, carrying me away from the last few weeks and toward lightness. It is paradoxical running, the more I hurt the freer I feel. There is spirituality, purging, travail and freedom, and there is liturgy in running a route that is as familiar as a lovers face under a sun shining like falling rain.

I've struggled this year, I've been flat and demotivated and running has been a chore interspersed with a few brilliant bursts. In five years of running this is the first time I've seriously considered throwing in the towel and giving up. I don't believe I will but I need to source a solution first.