A Free Run Home

Photo credit: Clint Patterson - Unsplash

Photo credit: Clint Patterson - Unsplash

My feet hit the pavement. One after the other, step by step, my strides gradually getting longer as I picked up my pace.

I smiled at the sun on my shoulders and smell of flowers blooming along the tree lined street. The music in my ears and wind at my back gave me momentum and pushed me along.

I had no plan, other than to end up back where I started, that is – but the path to getting there and how far I’d go in the meantime were still up for grabs. 

This is not my typical MO – I’m a planner. I haven’t always been… I know for a fact that the fresh new planners I got each year for the beginning of school were a complete waste of money – good for 3 days and then notoriously empty.

But graduate school, internship, and residency do that to you. They make us non-planners become planners, always forecasting 5 steps ahead and with several contingencies - to get your dissertation done, to manage clinical, research, and academic work, to be the most competitive you can be for the internship/residency/insert-any-other-position-or-title here.

… So you plan.

And if not for yourself, then for your patients and their treatment, for the research study you’re leading, and for everything at home. You just plan – and it becomes second nature.

So today, I decided to wing it – a free run.

See where I end up – no plans allowed.

As I continued running along the street, I started to slow approaching a fork in the road.

Go left or go right? A choice I usually don’t have to make on a run – since there’s usually a plan. But not today.

Just then the song coming from my earbuds changed – and the roulette that is the “random” setting on Spotify gave me a pleasant surprise – an old favorite. As the familiar tune played, I thought back to when I first heard it, way back 15 years ago, and I picked up my pace.

And I chose a direction – with no conscious thought or deliberation – just my feet carrying me away. And I ran – freely

I ran engrossed in the random collection of songs my Spotify had curated for me – Adam Derry to the Eagles to Matt Nathanson to Kenny Chesney to Boyz II Men to Maroon 5 – and everything in between. 

I kept running. Until the music just stopped – for no reason. So I slowed to a stop and I looked around.

The trees, the path, the birds overhead – At that moment I realized what I had done. I realized where I had gone.

I had wound up on my old path – my old running path of nearly 15 years ago. My old “5K a day” route I used to run before a shift at my summer jobs – before pinning on my pig-shaped “Famous Lindy” name tag or country line dancing in a mess of peanut shells at the roadhouse on cue whenever a specific George Strait song came on (which was often - too often - and strangely a hard conditioned response to shake) or my brief stint as a completely out of tune singing ice cream scooper (Yes, I still know the songs...).

I haphazardly jabbed at my phone until the music started playing again, through no doing of my own I’m sure, and then I was back running. 

This was my old path and I knew it by heart – all the straights and bends, intuitively leaning into the curves in the trail. Skipping over the loose beam on the wooden bridge – though I suppose it may have been fixed at some point in the past decade and a half, but might as well not chance it 😊...

I continued running – taking a route I hadn’t planned, but one that was mine. Full of memories brought about by familiar sites along the way. A house I had TP’d (with permission, of course. Honest to goodness the friend’s mother helped, it was a celebratory TP, and yes there’s a story – or several – there, but not today and maybe another time 😊).

And it was comforting. Reminding me that you can move across the country (a few times), leave for several years, and see so many things in your life and the world change – but some things, like the road to a place you once called home, will always be there. 

And I thought about how plans have a place. They help guide our actions, they give us a sense of what to expect, and they keep us accountable and efficient – at least hopefully.

But what about some freedom? Some spontaneity? Some unplanned time with an uncharted course that takes us right where we need to be? We need that, too.

Researchers, and mentors, and mothers have been saying this for ages: plan what you can and let go of the rest.

In fact, spending unscheduled time – time without a plan when our mind can wander – can lead to beneficial insights. Our brain tends to come up with creative ideas (or in this case, a blog post) in those times between the plans – in the spaces between the check boxes on our to do lists.

They come when our mind goes on cruise control and we sit back and see what happens. 

So I finished the run and I ended up back where I started – Home.

I was breathing heavy and a little tired, but I was content – with a new perspective for the journey I’d taken, not just in the past 30 minutes, but in the time since I’d last run that route.

I smiled up at the sun coming in through the leaves of the tree above me, hearing the unmistakable sounds of my goofy, lovable, furry, and oh-so-wonderful pup tumbling down the hall to the front door to greet me.

… And as I opened the door and reached down to pet his silly fluffy head, I made a mental note (dare I say a plan?... 😉) to do this again – to go on a free run home.


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Country Roads

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Finding Your Balance