I got a book for Christmas called Women Who Run by Shanti Sosienski and it is one of the most inspirational books I’ve ever read… and I’m only on page 49.

When it comes to running, I am not an every.single.day runner.  In fact, I don’t even really consider myself a “runner.”  I run when I want to.  I run for fun.  I run for fitness.  But most importantly, I run for me.  I honestly cannot say I love it.. yet.  And I’m not yet disciplined enough to lace up my sneakers each day because I know I should.  But I do enjoy it enough to register for races and spend money to do something I could do for free.  I feel that the bragging rights (more like I-Ran-A-Race-So-I’m-Cool rights) and t-shirt are worth it.

So back to this book.  It is full of stories of incredible women runners.  Marathon-running mothers, adventure racers, 50-somethings who can run a sub-seven-minute mile.  And as different as each of them are from one another, they all have the same message – they run because they love it.

So I get to page 49, right at the beginning of a new chapter and I decide that it would be a good idea to look for more races between the end of January and April.  So far, I’ve come up with 3 definites and a big empty calendar for the month of February:

February: HELP.

March: Hibernian 5K in my hometown (Lynn, MA).  Woo hoo!  Finally a race in the city I grew up in!

April: Energize the Earth 10K (Beverly, MA).  My first 10K.  Gah.  Who’s got a rockin’ training plan for this one?  Anyone?  E-mail me and we’ll be best friends.

May: Beach to Beach 5K (Marblehead, MA).  This will be the anniversary race of my first race ever back in May 2011.  I can’t wait to crush the crap out of last year’s time.

So, who out there has a fantastic race (5K, 4M or 5M.. ya know, since I run those now..) for February that they are dying to tell me about? (2 catches: It cannot be for Saturday, February 11th… I take the Foreign Service Exam that day(!) or any Sunday morning because I dance.)