Hope.

I think I've said in other posts that I'm not a big fan of organized religion. I have no problem with spirituality, but most organized religion doesn't appeal to me.

That being said, if you live in the South, which I obviously do, it's a bit hard to avoid the signs for "sunrise services" on Easter Sunday. Messages of hope and prayer emanate from billboards and facebook posts, and only the heathens don't have some form of organized worship to attend on Sunday morning.

My heathen worship Easter Sunday? At the foot of (and up into) the hills.

J and I went out for a run, and not just any run. We were at Lake Ouachita, which is in the Ozarks, and the hills there? Killer.

We did the first 2 miles on some incredibly beautiful, godforsaken steep hills, up, up, down, up, up, up, down, lungs burning, quads screaming, mind blanking. Well, that was me, anyway. We stopped after the first 2 miles, took a quick water break, and went out for 2 more.

Somewhere towards the end of the second half of the run, I remembered running these same roads a year ago on Easter weekend. The run last year had started with the resignation and annoyance that had plagued my runs for weeks: Sure, the first 10 steps feel fine, but that'll be all I get. Well, OK, 20 steps, any minute now the knee will start griping.  Huh. Quarter mile, half mile and I'm still jogging. That's unusual. Wow. A full mile. Slow jogging, but still running? Maybe there's hope...

It was the first decent run I'd had since January. I was beginning to think the knee was never going to get better (ok, it was hamstring tendinitis, but it felt like a knee problem), and I needed to give up the sport I'd only recently learned to appreciate. This was the first run that gave me anything even close to hope that it might be healing and better days were ahead. I was out of shape, slow, and irritable at how much ground I'd lost, but there was hope. 

So yesterday, one year later? I ran 4 miles at an average pace of 10:18 per mile. That doesn't sound incredibly fast at all, but if you could see some of the hills we ran, you'd understand why I am completely amazed that I was able to even come close to that. And even though it was hard, and even though my lungs burned and my quads screamed? I was incredibly grateful to be able to run those hills. How awesome to not be injured, to feel strong, and to be able to run.

And literally as I was thinking those thoughts, plodding up the last large uphill section, the rain started and the sun broke through the clouds at the same time. I'm not sure if there was a rainbow, 'cause there were too many hills and trees to see much of anything (and it's kinda hard to see when you are borderline passing out from oxygen deprivation).

But it was a gentle reminder of all the things I have to be grateful for - running and otherwise.

Of course, today, my quads are a not so gentle reminder of the run yesterday. But hey. I'll take the pain. It means I was able to run.