Last week, I had one of those moments that gave me insight into what the apostles must have felt when they saw Jesus saunter up on Easter Sunday (I always imagine him as shining, like a light bulb). Or when the parents of a kidnapped child have him brought back to them. Or when someone gets a lost wallet with everything still in it returned in the mail by a good Samaritan. Okay maybe I am exaggerating for effect but by now you all know that’s my style.
Another thing you all know is that I am quirkily old-fashioned about my running journal. I keep an actual, carbon-based record of my training, and it is much more than a cut-and-dried list of stats. It holds nuggets of emotion and memory on each page. But right before the year flipped from May to June, I lost it. It took me a full month before I accepted that it was gone for good, and that I’d better start up another log of my workouts. So I did, and I built up six weeks of entries. I had moved on.
Wednesday I was poking through some of my book campaign files (each title gets its own file, color-coded by season and organized by on sale date. It’s a thing of beauty, my system) since my boss needed revised numbers for the budget (we are only one month into fiscal so it’s still a bit of a guessing game). All of a sudden, my heart started pounding, my ears started ringing, and everything else faded to black as my eyes developed tunnel vision on what looked like the corner of my long-lost running journal! I held my breath and hastily shoved away the other papers in the file–Yes! Ohmygod ohmygod it was my old training log! I gave a gigantic whoop of happiness, and clutched the notebook to me. I stood up from my desk and burst out into the hall laughing with joy, too revved up to simply sit still. I skipped and ran a lap around the floor, laughing and shouting Whoo hoo! I am so happy! Awesome! Yes! (etc etc) while waving my running journal in the air above my head, victorious. I was breathless not from the effort of running but from mere excitement. I had given up all hope, and yet here it was, patiently waiting for me, quietly hibernating in an office folder all this time. I keep my campaign folders in the desk file drawer just to the left of where I tuck in my chair, so my training log was literally inches from me all this time, steadfast. What a comforting, romantic thought. Are our most dear always like that–perhaps silent and unseen at times, but evernear?
(If you are curious to know what it is like to have me as an officemate, consider this: during my lap around the floor, I passed no fewer than 20 offices and cubicles. Only two people popped their heads out to see what my ruckus was about. Most folks ignored my strange outburst, clearly considering it par for the course.)
I returned to my desk and, still too happy to return to budgeting, fired off first an email to a running buddy with the good news and then a series of tweets chronicling the momentous reunion. Folks on Twitter were so understanding when I lost my journal that I was betting they’d be happy to hear I had found it after all this time. And they were! Dozens of friends tweeted back at me their congrats and gladness.
Later than night, I laid in bed and spent some quality time reacquainting myself with my running journal. I flipped through the pages, starting in January, the cockles of my heart warming as memories of my workouts came rushing back. Here was the run with EN where I nearly leapt into his arms as racoons fought to our left; there was my long run with Matt through his neighborhood in Denver. I studied the hard weeks I’d forgotten about, when I’d felt sore and tired and every distance was an odd effort. I shrugged over all my false starts at cross-training (boot camp classes at the gym, the 100 Push-ups program, Pilates class). But mostly I was proud at all the miles I had logged for the London Marathon–I’d forgotten how diligently I’d trained for that hard-won PR. Rereading the log was like a leisurely dinner spent catching up with an old friend, where reminiscence dominated the conversation. That’s when I decided I would keep putting my workouts for the rest of 2010 into my new journal. “The books” will always be fudged for June 2010, but I will consider that the blank page separating the two chapters of my running life this year. It isn’t always such a happy occasion when things from the past resurface, and it’s rare indeed when those things can be brought back into the present and be part of my forward motion. Now that some of the wisdom from the past has been handed back to me, I can move forward with a more confident step .
Taking a page from my book...
Pigtails Flying 
love it
Zippy ~ Awakey!!!!
#fuckyeah.