(For those of you I haven’t already proudly told), for the past week I’ve been waking up at 6:30 to go running (although I probably run at the pace of an average person’s power walk, so you can judge for yourself how grand of an accomplishment this is). I decided to try it partly out of necessity because I have to leave for class at 8:00, partly to see if I could do it because lately so many people I know have been waking up early (like, 4:30 early) to go to the gym, and partly because since I was a kid, whenever we saw girls running early in the morning, my dad would tell me, “See how active some girls are! You should try to be like them.”
So I’m trying.
I didn’t expect running in the morning to be enjoyable. As you all know how much I love to exercise, I’m not going to lie, I don’t love it. But I certainly don’t hate it. The first steps as I leave my house and jog down Camino del Sur are my favorite - the morning air sprinkles my skin with soothing mist that gets rid of any lingering sleepiness, and as I am not yet tired and sweaty, my energy matches the upbeat rhythms of whatever pop/dance song I’m listening to (Lady Gaga is definitely a favorite).
For five days, I took the exact same route (turn left at Camino del Sur, pass the 56 down to Jackie’s house). It got a little boring, but I was hesitant to take a different route. Yesterday I tried a little variation and ran through some different neighborhoods around that area, but it wasn’t that much different. Today, though, I turned right at Camino del Sur and went up Carmel Valley to Black Mountain Rd. While I was truly exhausted (I don’t have a great desire to run up Carmel Valley again), I enjoyed running along Black Mountain, a street that I’d only seen before from inside a car. I enjoyed seeing the flowers that hung over backyard fences I’d never had a chance to notice, going through an area that was almost unrecognizable to me when seen from the sidewalk instead of the street, and ending up on a familiar street that I knew would take me home.
After I had showered and recapped my morning adventure, I found it strange that I’d been so unwilling to try a different route. I’d only been in this routine for five days, but I was already stuck in it, fairly certain that I’d enjoy that route the most and thus not eager to test a new one. I didn’t want to bother trekking up that hill and not enjoying it when I was used to one route and already knew how I would feel after the run. Certainty, predictability. Even for something as small as a run, I didn’t want to give up those two things that help me reach a level of security and, I think as a result, a sense of happiness and contentment.
I feel like I’m making it a habit to take a small event and connect it to some “life lesson” (I think I’ve written one IHUM paper too many). Although turning right at Camino del Sur led me to a longer and more tiring route, I’m glad I gave it a try. And as with all other cliches about “taking the different path,” I found things to enjoy that I would otherwise have missed. I don’t see myself trying new routes throughout all aspects of my life, but I guess this post is a reminder to myself to try at least a couple every now and then. Not every new route will take me back home, but maybe being a little far from home isn’t such a bad thing.
