An old habit has returned

Good or bad, we all have 'em... habits. Talking too much. Tardiness. Biting your nails. Eating a certain food (peanut butter for me). Facebooking, tweeting, blogging, or should we just call it "Interneting". Exercising. On, and on, and on. What's yours?

Some habits will drive you nutty whereas others make you feel good. Many habits come and go. But it's those that have come and gone and came back again that begin to, well like it or not, define a person.

A habit, good and bad, of mine is running. I love it. But at the same time, I HATE IT.

Now I've had my glory days of running. I consider my high school and short lived college career as glorious (even if I was DFL on my college team). And the two marathons following college (one, btw, only a minute from qualifying for Boston) were the highlights of my running career. And just like that, I was done.

But have you ever had old habits pop up periodically? Like smoking, for example. Now I don't smoke but the trend seems to be that a person can quit cold turkey, and then a social situation or a stressful situation presents itself and the old smoking habit arises again. Or another example would be dieting. We all know how that goes.

I have occasionally ran 5k's and 10k's in the past five years with a lot of competitive spirit, but by no means do I have competitive speed anymore. BUT I DEFIANTLY SWORE OFF MARATHONS. Nope, I would never care to do one again. Absolutely not. Done cold turkey.

But just like smoking, a situation has arisen and I'M IN! How could you pass up an invite to the New York City Marathon? Kelli, I really appreciate what you've done to get me in, but god I'm out of shape.

However there is something to say about the feeling you get at 7:00 am and you've just completed a ten mile run. And your furry running partner is foaming at the mouth because the humidity is 110% and he looks as if to say "WTHJH" (what the hell just happened)?

I do hope this old habit sticks around for a bit.