The Unlikely Clinic Leader

One of my happy places, and I have a mental library full of them, comes from this photo:

The woman who took the picture was from BC and simply turned around, whipped out her camera, and captured this moment.  The road to the life I live now started to fork in that moment.  A couple of weeks ago I was asked to lead a clinic for beginning runners.  After thinking about it for a little bit, I told a friend of mine about the offer.  She sagely said perhaps seeing me getting out and putting one foot in front of the year might tell people quietly the can do it too.

Let’s face it I am not any skinnier now than at the time of this photo.  I feel riddled with nervousness, not good for a recovering anxious person, praying saying yes was the right thing to do.  Once I took a look at the nerves, and the fear, it made sense to give a try.  When I started out running in 2004, a still, small voice said, “Take it.”  The voice made its appearance, quite strongly as I might add, to motivate me to get back to school as a library technician.  I felt ready to take the step.  Once I took the step, I met people encouraging me not only to run and finish in a road race, but to run and finish whatever I set my mind to in my life.

Next week I will face a set of nervous beginners.  Once I was that nervous beginner drawing in a haggard breath and sweating my brow.  My body met each minute added to my running time and I liked it.  This time around I struggle to get back into a healthy lifestyle after a period of forgetting to take care of myself.  Getting back into running will enable me to rest, recover, and find some new goals.  As John ‘the penguin’ Bingham once wrote The miracle isn’t that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start.