Happy Birthday

I just had a birthday and now I’m the youngest in the 45-49 age group. Getting older fills me with mixed emotions. I mean, another birthday is certainly better than no more birthdays, right? But time is just rushing by at full speed and sometimes I just want it to slow down!

People will often ask me how long I’ve been running. I’m so used to saying that it’s only been a couple years. I didn’t get this love for running until my mid 30’s and I’m so happy that the recent addition of this activity has improved my health and outlook on life. But time has truly been flying by! It’s been 10 years! Ten! That’s a decade! When I first started running, my kids were 3 and 6 years old! I look at my two incredible kids and think they’ve grown up overnight!

I took some graduate classes before the kids were born and I remember one of my professors taught about the importance of staying in the “here and now”. At the time I was a naive 25 year old who thought he was just being sentimental, but now I know what that means. Spending too much time in the past or in the future, or worse yet, in some pretend cyber land, while life around us continues unnoticed, is a very sad thing. Once we realize that we’ve been “living” in a daydream state, it’s too late; we’ve missed what was actually happening. I’ve fallen into this trap before and when I realized how much time I wasted, things I missed, I was quite sad. The last few years I’ve committed to living in the moment and I have to say, it is so freeing!

So back to the birthday. I do feel different. My hair is getting quite grey. I need to warm up more before my runs, and stretch more after them. I need more time to recover from hard workouts. But I feel much wiser about how I want to live my life, in the here and now. I feel healthy and fit and I love my family and friends. And now, I’m the youngest!

Let’s make a toast with our morning coffee: Here’s to living life every day; Staying in the present moment; and to happy running for all our years! Here Here!!!