Running in the Sun

Today I went out for a three mile run. Note that it is mid January, and it was sixty-eight degrees and sunny when I went outside to run. Now, to native Los Angelinos, that is nothing out of the ordinary, but for someone who spent the past three years slogging through, scraping off, and generally fighting with the snow in southern Michigan, it is quite an adjustment. In December, I was feeling kind of nostalgic about the snow – in spite of the above sentence of complaining, I was always excited when the first snow of the year came down, and my last law school roommate got me hooked on snow shoeing. However, my trip home to Missouri and to Ohio to visit Rob’s family reminded me what it is really like to be cold. It was around ten degrees, which would be nothing in Michigan, but is actually pretty unusual for St. Louis and Cincinnati. The weather almost called for a down coat, long underwear, and snow boots. And it reminded me of a resolution I made last winter when I was running on a treadmill in my apartment complex gym: when I live in southern California, I’m going to take advantage of the beautiful weather year round. Have I been doing so? Absolutely not! So, a couple of times last week, and again today, I went and ran outside and it was beautiful. I’m hoping to get back into running regularly. A friend of mine is running a half-marathon in September (she apparently got conned into this because her best friend’s husband told this friend she could never run a half-marathon, a statement that clearly won’t fly and is good cause to register for said half-marathon post haste) and I’m actually considering it, though I’ve never actually run a race longer than a 5k. September is eight months away… plenty of time to train to run 13-something miles, right? Right.

In any case, though it might be a little late for New Year's Resolutions, I'm going to make one/renew one now - I will make a point to enjoy the outdoors in sunny Los Angeles as though I had just flown out from snow-covered Michigan, whether by taking nice run, firing up the grill, or sipping a glass of wine on the back porch. I'll let you know how it goes.