How many best days?

Cold again and quite misty this morning. I found myself adjusting my head torch to try and get a clearer view of the path ahead.

I started thinking, "I can't wait for the lighter warmer mornings."

Then I thought how much of my time I must spend waiting for time to go quickly until something that I perceive to be better or special comes.

Add that to the times when I look back with nostalgia at happy moments, days or experiences, and how much is left experiencing the present?

I am having experiences of life every moment of every day, but how often am I actually experiencing them? When I'm thinking of the future or the past I'm not experiencing what's there now.

So, maybe it is a bit cold, a bit dark and a bit misty, but today could possibly be one of the best days of my life. Any day could.

How will I recognise the possibilities and opportunities that flash before me when my mind is in a different time?

How many potential best days of my life have I missed before?

The children know

I've let two weeks slip by again since my last blog entry.

As I count the number of days left to complete my year of running a mile every day, and tallying my total number of consecutive days, I'm also wondering if this will be the day when I will become a grandfather.

It's all very exciting.

I do love small children. They are perfect examples of what it's like to live in the present moment. No regrets or embarrasment of things that they wished they hadn't done, and no worries or concerns about the future, whether they will make a mistake or get hurt.

And the funny thing is that we were all like that when we were little.

If that is the case, which it plainly is, then there is nothing new for us to learn about being present to our every experience of life rather than wasting our time regretting and worrying.

If there's nothing new to learn, surely it must be easy to release the accumulated and non-productive skills of regretting and worrying.

What would be left is the joy and excitement of each new experience, which every moment clearly is.

Wrong-footed shoes

I stretched my run to just over 2 miles this morning, the first time I've done that since I had plantar fasciitis and ditched my running insoles. It felt really good.

Admittedly I was a bit later this morning as I had to attend my monthly business networking group, which is always fun but does mean leaving home a lot earlier than usual.

As I was running on my own this morning and going a bit further I tried to concentrate on feeling the ground beneath my feet, which I can do a lot easier with worn down running shoes and no insoles. It made me think of the parallel with helping people to fully experience each moment of their lives through coaching rather than numbing themselves from the present moment.

Every bit of life, the highs and lows add value if we allow ourselves to raise our awareness. They all teach us lessons about how we live our lives and what is really important to us.

On the topic of worn down shoes, a guy called David Smyntek, who is a runner and physical therapist specialising in acute rehabilitation, decided to conduct an experiment to see if he really should replace his expensive running shoes every 300 to 500 miles, as the running shoe industry was telling him. So when his shoes wore down on one side he swapped shoes and continued to run 5 miles a day wearing his worn down shoes on the wrong feet. He experienced no problems whatever.

Makes you think, doesn't it.

By the way I've now run over 100 miles since the beginning of the year.

Day 57 - why I do it

I am definitely beginning to notice the lighter mornings. The fact that it's not raining certainly helps, but the early morning run is still a game of attempting to dodge the puddles.

Two days ago I was writing about it being hard to get going even after 55 days, but now I'm feeling that running a mile is just something I do in the mornings, I don't even really think about it. It's like brushing my teeth.

How can I have changed my thinking so quickly? Maybe tomorrow it will be a struggle getting going again?

What is it I'm trying to prove with this mile each day experiment? I've forgotten.

Actually, I don't know that I'm trying to prove anything. First and foremost I was just trying to see if I could actually run a mile every day for a month.

Now I know that I can, I'm just curious as to how long I can keep it up for. Also, I'm curious as to what I discover, if anything, from continuing the experiment for as long as I can.

I wonder why I always try to find a purpose? Running is something that I know nourishes me, my body, my mind and my spirit, so doing some of it ever day makes sense.

I watched Jill Bolte Taylor's TED talk - "A Stroke of Insight" again yesterday. I never fail to be inspired by this video, no matter how many times I've seen it, and it brings me back to what I have eluded to in a previous post about running and connection.

Running somehow temporarily disables my logical left side of my brain that relates to the past and the future, and that sees me as a separate entity. It engages my creative right side of my brain that lives in the present moment and that recognises that I am just part of an energy force that encompasses everything I can see, hear, feel, taste and touch.

This helps me feel that it is never just me alone. I am always a part of something way bigger. I find that uplifting, empowering, reassuring and inspiring.

And how I got here from how I started this post, I have absolutely no idea.

Oh well.