A Sole to Soul Connection

What does mileage mean to your feet?

In all honesty, those feet underneath you will run what you tell them too. That could be 20 miles a week or 95. They will complain all the way sometimes, but the work will get done. Now the only thing left to decide is whether you will be nice to your feet or mean.

Take my week. I was mean. While my feet know every mile I have run each day, my brain can sometimes loose track of what I have done. Tuesday morning I ran an easy 7 miles and during that run my head politely forgot that I was supposed to be in 2 different places later. Running in two different places at night. So I ended up with plenty more than 7 miles for the day. And, the same thing happened on Thursday. Too many miles at once. Well, for the day, twice.

It has taken me a while to learn what my feet can handle. Usually, it matches what my body can handle. And that happens to never match what my heart thinks I can handle. So, my soles know I can only handle less than what I am actually doing and my soul knows I should be running more. I have noticed that this disconnect happens in lots of areas of my life. I think I can cook, clean, do laundry, save the world, and write a blog when I get home from work. That is what my soul knows I can handle. Reality shows me that I can actually usually only handle taking the dog for a walk and throwing a pizza in the oven. My slow cooker is a god-send but it requires that I get up a few precious more minutes earlier than I already do to fix dinner so that when I actually get home I can just sit down. Not really my favorite situation. As much as I love my feet and my sanity, I love my sleep more.

Welcome to manual labor. Welcome to manual life. Welcome to manual running.

Shoes still work, clean or muddy.
Heart still works, tired or not.

I work on my feet, run on my feet, clean on my feet, and think best on my feet. (Ha). Well, those boats are pretty important to me. They keep me afloat, if you catch my wave? But I can't use my feet for everything. So I will still probably try anyways...

Wake up tomorrow morning. Look at your feet. Say thank you. Most of you will have more coordinated, more dependable ones than mine. Yet, I am thankful just the same. The mileage I am able to put on my feet correlates directly with the my sanity. What else can I do? We all have things that keep us together. Put some tread on a shoe, some support in the arch, and some bunny ears in the laces and I walk on out the door ready for life. Find those things, those places that help you get ready. And trust your feet. Especially if they connect to your head and your heart like mine do. They get me to my mile 12. Some days that is only a short run and other days it is more. That's the beauty of mile 12. It doesn't have to be a specific distance or place.

Its a kind of sole to soul connection.