Running without your head

See the caption under the picture above?  "Hard to run without a head."

Youngest daughter, age 5, was playing a game on her sister's iPod.  I could tell from her groan that she had not done well, and she said to me, "It's hard to run without a head."  The next day I asked her sister about this, and she confirmed that yes, indeed, it is hard to run in that game once you no longer have a head.  So that got me thinking about running (and you know, if you run, that your thoughts are never very far from running), and how virtually IMPOSSIBLE it is to "run without a head".  Or more accurately, run without having your head in the run.  I saw a great post on someone's FB page this week that said, "When your legs can't run any longer, run with your heart", and I definitely think that's true.  But for me, anyway, a very large portion of the battle is mental.  I can talk myself into or out of a good or bad run, at least most of the time.  If I am rushed and Life (you know, the capital "L" stuff that we all have to juggle) crowds the precious time I have set aside for my run, I tend to get anxious and as often as not, the run will come out the loser.  However, even on those not-so-great days, if I can jump the sometimes Everest-like hurdle in my head about my run, I'll enjoy it, feel better during and after it, and Life will become ... life again.

So my goal for the next [insert reasonable time period here, if that can ever be determined--week? month? year?] is to stay on top of my mental game, regardless of Life--or life, for that matter.  I need to make sure that I approach every run with an attitude of  "Oh, yeah, this is MY TIME and I'm going to run like the wind!".  NOT, "Oh, great, I've only got x minutes of time, there is no way I can get a decent run in, why am I even bothering with this, I should just go polish off a box of Thin Mints."  I'm going to try REALLY hard to run WITH my head (and screwed on properly, too, perhaps!).

Happy running!