My personality change when I’m not running

Whether I’m training for anything in particular or not, I generally run or do some sort of cross-training nearly every day. If I’m not, it’s usually because I’m either sick or too busy and preoccupied with something else. Last week, however, I took the week off of running for no other reason than to give myself a break after my half-marathon in order to come back to running completely refreshed. In my time off running, I tapped into something. It wasn’t time, because I run at 5:00 a.m. so if I’m not running I’m sleeping. It wasn’t physical energy, because I find running tends to give me more energy throughout the day. It was more of a personality change, really, which I can’t quite explain.

Some examples:

My children don’t love vegetables. It is a fairly constant battle to get them to eat them. When I’m in running-mode, I approach it as something to get-done, and force them in however I can (usually at breakfast!) During my running break, however, I decided to take the kids grocery shopping, buy some fresh zucchini, carrots, apples and bananas, and take them home to help me to bake all of the healthy goodness into muffins and loaves. If you know me, you know how uncharacteristic that is and how I sometimes make fun of people who do things like that because really, JUST EAT YOUR VEGETABLES!

Veggie-filled muffins and loaf

Veggie-filled muffins and loaf

I’m a fairly social person, and I love a good party, but I generally have a limited reserve for going out to multiple parties in a row. I call it “doing a double” (similar to double runs) if I go out two nights in a row. It’s a rare occurrence. However, during my running break, I planned, looked forward to and enjoyed going to four social gatherings in three days! Not only that, but I didn’t even worry about wearing impractical footwear.

My party footwear of choice when not running

My party footwear of choice when not running

Usually for Halloween, we appreciate the neighbours’ done-up houses, but we aren’t really the ones who do more than a pumpkin or two. I generally don’t see the point in buying dollar-store junk which will then take up space in our house for a year and will eventually end up in a land-fill, all for one night. But for some reason this year I got a bit more into it. We did the dollar store trip, went to the park to find sticks to use as gravestones, and I let my kids decorate the house how they wished (which included them climbing our tree with all sorts of caution tape wrapped around everyone’s limbs).

What happens when you let the kids decorate

What happens when you let the kids decorate

Happily, I am now back to running. I’m hoping I haven’t done anything permanent, and I’m assuming my normal personality will return. My friends and family will have to wait for my next running break to see a return of the veggie-muffins, multiple late nights and tacky house.