Tomorrow Is Another Day...

I Run Because.

I can still vividly remember the first time I ever went "for a run".

Of course I had run before--on the playground playing chase, when I was late for the school bus, when I was forced to participate in a sportsball game--but I had never run just for the sake of running.  I remember going to a sleepover in middle school and my friend's father came in early in the morning to wake her up so she could go run with him.  This was just mind blowingly crazy to me.

So then I get to high school, join Army JROTC and become laser focused on earning every uniform ribbon I could possibly get my greedy, over-achieving little fingers on.  I was determined that my ribbon rack would rival that of any South American military dictator.  One of those ribbons could be earned by running a mile in something like 10 minutes or less.  Ten minutes.  One mile.  This seemed achievable  and I figured I could devote ten minutes of my day to running around the block if it meant I could add another feather to my cap.  Or ribbon to my rack.  It's sort of embarrassing the things that excited me when I was sixteen.

My best friend and I decided to run together every day after school and would reward ourselves with a Backstreet Boys listening party following each run.  I earned my ribbon and there ended any relationship with my running shoes.  I may even have been running in Keds.  This is how seriously I took it.

Then I ended up stumbling onto a path that led me to Air Force ROTC in college and running became the stumbling block that threatened my full scholarship for four solid years.  I hated it with a passion.  I had no idea how to train.  I would just try to run for as long as I could and as fast as I could for a month prior to my physical fitness test and then hope I would pass it by the skin of my teeth.  I was always one of the slowest runners and I never seemed to get any faster.  It was embarrassing and exhausting and defeating.

What followed was another two years of military service where I just did the best I could to pass my fitness tests and my relationship with running became more and more soured.

Then one day, I heard about this program that was created to train a non runner for a 5K in two months.  Starting from walking and going to running 3 miles in just two months when I felt like I had spent my entire adult life just battling to finish 2 measly miles seemed like a long shot, but it was one I decided to take when I embarked on my first Couch to 5K run.  And after a couple of months, I was indeed able to run 3 miles.  Not fast.  But nobody was counting.  My running was finally my own.

When we moved to Charleston, we kept hearing about this Bridge Run that it seemed like all of the locals participated in.  It was a 10K which seemed pretty daunting, but I found another training program similar to the C25K and decided to give it another long shot.  And I did it.  Six miles.  And that's when it occurred to me that maybe a half marathon would be another crazy, ridiculous long shot that I could take.  And so I did it.  Then I did it again.

There is nothing like spending your whole life thinking one thing about yourself and discovering something entirely different.  Realizing that the limits you've felt were entirely self-imposed.  That you've spent your life viewing yourself through the wrong lens.  Like you've been looking in a fun house mirror and are finally seeing the truth.

I always demurred and insisted that I wasn't a runner.  If anything, I was a jogger.  A turtle.  Just barely managing to put one foot in front of another.

But do you know how I know that I am a runner?

Because I run.

I'm still not fast.  I don't run to win races.  I don't run to be faster than anyone else.  I don't run to pass a test or earn a ribbon or maintain a scholarship.  I run for me.  If I'm being completely honest, I don't even run to keep myself healthy, or in shape, or to get out of the house.

I RUN BECAUSE I NEVER THOUGHT I COULD.

And I can.

Harry Potter & The Chamber of Charlemagne on Parade

Over the Columbus Day holiday, the family and I packed up and headed out for a low key weekend away in the Netherlands.  We decided to stay in the relatively below the radar city of Maastricht and found ourselves incredibly charmed by the city.  

We thought it would be a standard day of walking around the city, window shopping and checking out the local church, but as we were eating lunch on the main street, what to our wondering eyes should appear but a marching band in full regalia gathering a crowd as it paraded down the street.  We hurriedly cleared our table and ran out into the street to give chase.  We followed them across a bridge and around some corners and they eventually led us to the gathering grounds of a full on Mardi Gras style parade.

We never were able to nail down exactly what the name of this celebration was, but it was definitely Carnivale-like in spirit and costuming, and we cheered excitedly for each colorfully dressed crewe who passed by us as the parade rolled by.  What we particularly loved about it was that it seemed to be a family affair.  Small children banged drums or tooted horns in the marching bands, tossed candy in the crewes, and babies and toddlers were pushed down the streets in strollers by their mothers and fathers.

Once all of the parade had made its way by us at the start of the route, we tagged along to the end where a big stage was set up in front of the town hall.  Our airbnb hosts didn't speak the best English, but what we gathered from them was that there was some sort of king or prince revealed at the end of the parade once all of the floats and crewes had arrived.  By this point the girls were hungry and cranky and we didn't understand all of the Dutch announcements and speeches taking place on-stage, so we decided to call it a day and head back to our apartment.

The day before had been a gloomier day, so we made the short drive to the German city of Aachen, to visit the Aachen Cathedral, or Kaiserdom.  This is the oldest cathedral in Northern Europe, begun in 796 and restored and added on to over the years with a final restoration done in 1881, and is the final resting place of Charlemagne.  From 936 to 1531 the cathedral was the location for the coronations of 30 German kings and 12 queens.  My favorite part of the cathedral was the glittering golden mosaics that covered the ceilings--they gave the whole place a mystical, ethereal glow.  The Kaiserdom holds many notable historical items including the throne of Charlemagne and the imposing Barbarossa chandelier (1165/1170) which was lit for High Feasts.

And finally, on our way home, the event which spurred the trip to begin with, a stop at the Odysseum musem in Koln to visit the Harry Potter Exhibition, displaying a treasure trove of sets, costumes and props from the eight movies.  I had the pleasure of being sorted into Ravenclaw, seeing the golden snitch up close and personal, plucking a mandrake root from its pot, reading Harry's pledge to Umbridge to no longer tell lies and the Half-Blood Prince's notes in Advanced Potion-Making, getting within clutching distance of Dumbledore's robes, visiting Hagrid's hut and so, so much more.  It was such an awesome exhibit and well-worth a visit if you're a fan of the movies and it comes to a town near you!