Time. I’m obsessed with time. I fixate on seconds, minutes, hours….I’m constantly doing math in my head.

Sally’s head: “If we don’t hit traffic I could be home by 5:43 tonight….that’ll give me 37 minutes before the sun sets”….or “I’ll set the alarm for 4:07am….walk the dog, at 4:12, jump in the shower at 4:49 and eat something at 5:15. Then hit the road 5:30am to meet friends at 6:00am”

Then there’s the time fixation while running….a.k.a. “my Garmin time”. I’m obsessed with that too. It also gets my brain all mathematical…

Sally’s head: “OOOH 11:17 pace. If I can maintain this I’ll PR”….”11:46 pace? WTF? my watch is broke. I FEEL like I’m going faster than that!”….

I’m realizing as I get older that time obsession is BAD. But it’s so hard to un-obsess….I want to make a conscious effort to change this. I want to ease up the scheduling of my life and let it flow a little more naturally. And with this effort I want to try and limit the amount I try to cram in each day. The ridiculous “to-do” lists need to get shorter. I was reading a post on Facebook that my friend’s brother wrote. Their dad passed away suddenly a few months ago. He was talking about the impending “firsts” of holidays without their dad. I commented how I remembered when my husband passed away I went through similar anxiety and dread for those “firsts”. But having been through them (and then some—it’s been 14 years) the anticipation of those “firsts” were more brutal than the actual holiday itself. If I could go back, I would have spent the time embracing my “firsts” instead of eating up my precious moments with negative anticipation.

Time is precious. And that is why I try and make good use of every moment. But I’m not enjoying each moment if I’m so fixated on the next moment. I need to try to be more like my dog. He knows how to live in the moment!

OK, now that I’ve got all my deep thoughts out of the way, on to some other stuff. I ran today for the first time since my big 20 miler on Sunday. Overall felt good. Some residual tightness in my hamstring but nothing to crazy. I started my run at 10:55am because I want my body to start getting used to this late start over the next 17 days when I run the NYC Marathon in wave 4 that starts at that time. I’m a GENIUS!

And since I started my run so late I spent all morning with the love of my life.

We walked for about 2 miles through some trails in the woods where we saw a buck and a doe. (no pictures because I didn’t want to scare them. They are such sweet timid creatures). Then I took him to a baseball field and let him of the leash and we ran around like lunatics! AHH speed drills in disguise. So much fun!

Well I better go get some work done. I’ve got about 120 precious freelance work moments ahead of me =)

Question: Does anyone else have similar fixations with time? 

P.S.: here are a few pics from Sunday’s Staten Island Half Marathon…

My favorite bridge in the background.

running peeps

filming my finish

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