The sound of my annoying alarm penetrated my mind at 5:00 am this morning.  I sat up in bed and stared at the clock.  I was suddenly jealous of my sleeping baby and sleeping husband (who was, indeed, snoring loudly).  I sat there on the edge of the bed in thought for a few minutes (or maybe I had fallen asleep sitting up… who knows).  I realized that my running buddy might notice if I didn’t show (even though that slacker didn’t show up last week!) and I had a feeling that our running coach has a better memory than she lets on.  Thankfully, I was already wearing my running shorts, so I only had to surmise the energy to change my shirt and grab a cereal bar out of the pantry.  As I was about ready to drag myself out the door, I heard my 2-year old tapping on her bedroom door.  It was like a scene out of a horror movie because I nearly jumped out of my running shorts!  “Arg.”  I went in her room and coaxed her back into bed with promises of a fun day once I returned home.

It is funny how there are no cars out on the street at 5:30 am on a Saturday morning.  Shouldn’t everyone be getting up to do some exercise before the sun rises?  Oh wait, yes.  The crazy people mingling by their cars in a field next to the St. John’s River.  It was my type of people so I parked and got out of the car.  Bad mistake because it was then that I realized how tragically hot and humid it was.  How could this be?  It was 6:00 in the morning for crying out loud!  I was already drenched by the time I met up with the others.  On top of that, there were these darn annoying bugs.  I grabbed all of the courage I could muster to stay in position and not run back to my car and hit the high road.

Okay, now I must say that the minutes that followed my little “crisis” changed my perspective completely.  I became content and excited to run.  Afterall, I was alive and well.  We learned about David.  A very strong, determined man who was battling stomach cancer when he was diagnosed with lymphoma.  Can you imagine not having the capacity to feel hungry or full because your stomach had been replaced with a man-made pouch?  Can you even imagine having to endure endless cycles of chemotherapy and radiation in hopes that all of the evil cells will be eradicated?  Today, I ran in honor of David.  Fortunately, he is doing much better than he was last Christmas Eve, but the battle is not over.

So there we were, running 5 miles on a picturesque Saturday morning along the beautiful St. John’s river just happy to be able to soak it all in.