Craving

"We run, not because we think it is doing us good, but because we enjoy it and cannot help ourselves...The more restricted our society and work become, the more necessary it will be to find some outlet for this craving for freedom. No one can say, 'You must not run faster than this, or jump higher than that.' The human spirit is indomitable."
-Sir Roger Bannister, first runner to run a sub-4 minute mile

It is the craving for freedom and the notion that I have control.  I am not a control freak but I love the control that running gives me.  I decide when I run, how far I run, how fast I run, where I run.  My body and mind directs me, nobody else.  I find freedom in that, the freedom to choose.  I don't have to run by any outside force.  I choose to run.  The only thing that I can't control is the weather which adds variety.  You get what you get on any given day but you still have the freedom to run in that weather, the freedom of how you deal with it.  Nobody calls me up and says, "hey, 2 days from now you must run 26 miles, or you can never run again."  Nobody says, "run a 6 minute mile, or don't bother."  I crave that freedom to be alone and run as I please, escaping from the chains that bind me.  In running, uncomfortable situations are as comfortable as a warm blanket on a snowy afternoon sipping hot chocolate by a raging fire.  I crave the freedom to be in nature, to be in life, to see others doing the same.  It is a craving with an appetite for destruction, a destruction of stressors.  I crave freedom.

Today Day 48: 4 miles; 2014: 270 miles