I Am Insane

It's official. I'm off my rocker.

I am determined to run at midnight. Never mind that it's bloomin' COLD out there (in the 30s, and my friends in colder climates can stop laughing, I'm a California Girl and 36 degrees is freezing, as far as I'm concerned). Never mind that I haven't stayed up this late in a good couple of months because of all the getting up early to cook my eggs, make a smoothie and rush off to the gym to work out with M. the Reasonable. Never mind that I ran two-and-a-half miles this morning...another thirty-minute run, and people, I think it's messing with my brain because I actually want to--am determined to--go for a midnight run so I can "start off 2012 right."

Not a long run--I can't stand another thirty minutes. I'm thinking a mile or so. Just to be running when the clock strikes midnight and 2012 begins in California.

Let's keep in mind that I'm pretty much the World's Most Reluctant Runner EVER and that even this morning, before a particularly good run (minimal shin splints, decent speed), I was whining and groaning to myself as I laced up my trainers and geared up for the long haul. I'm volunteering to get out of my pajamas, leave the warm house, and run in the middle of the night, all because I feel like I need to send myself a message that 2012 is the year I finally run a whole 5K, and maybe even aim for a 10K and good grief, this is why I have never experimented with drugs--if a runner's high can send me out the door running when I should be curled up in bed surrounded by cats then we can be assured that anything illegal would mess me up in ways that are too scary to contemplate.

Honestly, something has happened to me this week. I really thought that Christmas Eve's thirty-minutes-no-stopping-no-walking run was a fluke caused by lingering anger from an argument I'd just had with Dad. But then, on Monday, I got out there and did it again. And again on Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. I took Friday off and then managed another thirty minute run today. It's like a switch has flipped in my head and suddenly I really, truly believe that I'm a runner. It's a little scary, really.

I've started following all these similar fitness-crazy types on Twitter. There's actually a term for us: runnerds. Get it? Runner and nerd! I'm becoming a runnerd, in addition to being a Singing Fool and a Duck Lady and every other unique and wonderful and weird thing that makes me Meg of the L.P.B.

Running at midnight, people. What have I become?