En*dor*phins

For the life of me, I can never remember the word “endorphin,” the feel-good hormone released during exercise or other strenuous physical activities.

But after a day of being stuck inside my own head, stressing about the past and trying to predict the future, I started craving that  certain feeling… the high that combines out-of-breath satisfaction with pure, physical exhaustion; the feeling of supreme accomplishment that doesn’t really require brain power.

Simply put, I needed to f@$#in’ ruuuuuuuun.  

And I feel so much better now. With my kicks on, my gaze soft and my iPod bumping, I sweat out my angst. Other people vanished. Problems slipped away. The constant inner dialog disappeared. It was just me focusing on what my body needed me to do in order to keep going: straighten my back, adjust the speed, fix my headphones, drink some water, increase/decrease the incline, etc. But most important, I had to remind myself to just breathe, something we often forget to do on and off the treadmill.

Now I’m just basking in the afterglow of my endorphin-induced high. Life is pretty simple.