What a crazy weekend.  I took off to head back to the lovely Chicago and went immediately on a 3 and a half hour drive to watch my brother graduate from college.  And graduate he did.  We sat through a ceremony filled with every weather phenomenon known to man.  It drizzled, it poured, the sun shone bright and the temperature went from 85 to 48 in a span of maybe 15 minutes.  And probably the best thing was that although it was overcast 95% of my stay, I walked away with a nice sunburn as a souvenir.

But the entire trip wasn’t so bad.  I loved seeing my family and my childhood pup.  My mother and I took quite a few nice walks with her because the weather just couldn’t be beat.

One of the best parts of my trip was an impromptu run around the park behind my house.  There is no greater feeling than the spontaneous need to run.  You’re not doing it to workout, you’re just doing it to go.  Sometimes these runs come out of the need to blow off steam and sometimes they just come out of the need to soak in the beauty of a situation in the quickest way you physically can.  The park was beaming with light and colors and warmth and I laced up my shoes and took off.  I wasn’t going for speed, I just ran to take it all in.  This was the same type of run I did in Houston awhile back and it really helped reinvigorate my love for running.  Give one of these runs a try.  Find somewhere beautiful or interesting and just go.

Which leads me to my next point.  I found this quote below before my workout this morning.

And it resonated with me in crazy ways.  Every day is a chance to get better.  Every day you wake up, you decide what version of yourself you want to be.  You can be the same old you or you can do something to make yourself just that much better.  Maybe it’s packing a healthier lunch than normal for work or parking a little bit farther away from the front door or maybe it’s spending just 5 more minutes on your workout. It all adds up and it all makes for a better you.

-sj