When I was thirty, I was sponsored for a year by Under Armour. The athletic apparel company had launched its first running shoe and was taking a grass roots approach to marketing – today we would likely be called ambassadors, but social media wasn’t the beast it is now and so we were officially sponsored athletes. This meant that for the duration of my contract, one year, I exclusively wore Under Armour gear while running – everything from the visor on my head to the sweat-wicking underwear to the socks encasing my feet in my shoes – every item of clothing was Under Armour. It was a pretty sweet deal – I got a ton of free gear and while I didn’t particularly like the shoes, I did like their apparel. (Note: this was long before Kevin Plank, the founder and owner of Under Armour, was a vocal Trump fan. Now that this is known I no longer purchase Under Armour gear.)

My early thirties were very good for my running, in fact I think they were probably the best of my life. I logged miles easily, knocking out a 10-mile run each Saturday as a part of my usual routine. If I was training for a race, my mileage increased accordingly. At my peak, when I trained for an ultra-marathon, I was doing back-to-back long runs on the weekends, culminating with a 22-mile run on Saturday and a 16-mile run on Sunday. During the summers I did speed training with my running group, Tracky Tuesday, and several years in a row we won the 9/11 5k. One year I even won my division.

Somewhere in my mid-thirties things changed though. A friend who did CrossFit wanted to train me, to see if I could run faster by not doing much running, focusing on things like weighted sled pulls instead. I agreed and to my horror, it completely ruined me. I spent the next two years in and out of the orthopedic doctor’s office and physical therapy, fixing what CrossFit had broken and relearning how to run. When this happened, my love of running fell away and became something difficult and painful and something that required immense focus to ensure my alignment and gait and stride were correct so I didn’t re-injure myself. This sport, this exercise, this way of life that I had loved since I was thirteen had become something I couldn’t get back into. So while I never fully stopped running, I backed off of it severely and found other forms of working out.

Over the past couple of years I’ve made attempts to get back into running and I’ve enjoyed more and more – it hasn’t felt the same as it did ten years ago, but it’s gotten easier and more natural. And then within the past few months something started happening. I started increasing my mileage a little at a time. I now am a member of OrangeTheory Fitness and have become a total junkie to this workout – I’m there six days a week and every workout has running. It’s treadmill running, which I never much cared for, but it’s interval training, with speeds and inclines constantly changing so it’s never the same and I’m never bored.

On weekdays, when I can sneak it in, I’ll go for an afternoon run, logging a few miles to supplement my morning OTF workout (I usually run 3-3.5 miles during an OTF workout). And Sundays have become my running (and yoga) day. After my morning coffee I lace up my shoes and hit the road. And lately, I’ve been increasing my mileage. I’m now up to eight miles on Sunday and am planning to get back to my weekly 10-mile run habit. And it feels good, really good.

In the past, running was my zen time, my time to zone out and not think or just allow my mind to wander freely. Sometimes I wrote poems while running but usually I just allowed my mind to do what it needed – either working through some problem or issue, or thinking about absolutely nothing at all. Now I usually listen to my audio book while I run, getting in a few chapters while I log my miles.

I’m glad running has once again become something easy and natural for me. I’m glad running has once again become something my body craves. I’m glad I’ve returned to running and once again fallen in love with it.