Island Dreaming

I am sitting on a lanai in Maui, three thousand miles from home. I've been watching the light dance across the water, lighting the distant shore with a faint, unearthly glow. The sky is just beginning to show signs of the orange that signals day's end. My body is tired from snorkeling, and the sand has burned away layers of my old self.

It seems a fitting end to one chapter of my life. A year and a half ago, I started a blog about relays as I started to get serious about my running. My writing grew with my training runs, and I felt new confidence as opportunities opened up for me. I challenged myself in ways I never dreamed possible, exposing parts of myself long kept hidden.

Long ago, I had a childhood friend tell me, "No one ever listens to you Teri." Those words have stuck with me far too long. This journey has taught me that there are those who do listen to what I say. I will never forget my first blog reader who excitedly showed me the drawers in his van - a suggestion I had made in a post I imagined no one was reading. The weight of those words began to fall away.

A curious thing happened as I continued on my running and writing journey. I found that my real passion lies not in the relays I love but in the running - heading out on the trails and seeing how far I can go. Even more surprising, my competitive nature has softened...each race becomes more and more about the journey and less about the outcome. I finally started to realize that I have a real journey in front of me, and that blogging about relays was distracting me from that end.

When I return from this vacation, I will be handing over the reigns on the blog I've worked so hard to build. I will be starting a new running journey from the beginning - building strength, nutrition, endurance - in new ways and exploring what it means to be a runner. I don't expect to win any races, but I am not looking to. Instead, I hope to find myself on the trails, to discover what I am made of when the going gets tough.

The light over the ocean has now concentrated to a single, golden sheath shimmering beneath the ridge of eastern Maui. It is hard, scintillating, as I hope to find myself to be in those long, hard miles. But even if I find that I am the deep, soft blue, I will be okay.