I notice the leaves are falling, the weather is getting cooler and darkness seems to set in earlier than before…. it just reminds me that winter is around the corner.

Time to dust off the jackets and polish my boots and find my cold weather running gear, if I will ever use it.

The bottom line is I hate the cold..yes I said it, I hate the long cold wintry nights. My apartment seems to have an eerie quiet around winter nights. Maybe this year, I will actually try lighting a fire, sitting in front of it and watching the flames dance, while I sip a hot cup of cocoa.

Instead of talking about winter, I should enjoy fall…as hard as I try, fall reminds me of winter and that I will have to bundle myself up in layers upon layers of clothes and put my shorts and t-shirts away.

While for many this might be normal, I am a warm weather gal, I grew up in the tropics, where we had no idea about winter or snow or snow boots or jackets…it was an endless array of sunshine, shorts, flip-flops and did I say sunshine ?

Well for now instead of thinking of falling leaves, cold weather and snow, let me think about running instead.

Its been about 2 weeks since my half marathon and I have been bad since that day. I have had copious amounts of fast food, pizza, doughnuts, fried food, cake, coffee with loads of sugar and whipped cream and on and on it goes, but today, I reeled that monster in. I am back to my healthy eating and back to running.

It was the running that reminded me about cold weather. I set off this morning for a long run at 8 am, but my normal long run was shortened because, thanks to the high pollen count, a runny nose and burning eyes made it hard to focus on running. But I kept going, after all I seem to keep adding more half- marathons on my to-do list. The one became 2 and 3 and now it has become 4.  I just decided to take on another half marathon on my birthday weekend, what better way to celebrate getting a year older than running 13.1 miles with a friend and a bunch of strangers on a cold November morning.

Maybe I am being overly ambitious trying to do half-marathons back to back, but what is life without a few challenges thrown in. So as much as I hate the cold and would love to put my running shoes away. I am gonna keep going and going and maybe with all that running I will forget that I ran through winter and end up in Spring at the finish line.

***  I have once again signed up for writing 101 on WP. The first writing assignment was “Unlock your mind”

To get started, let’s loosen up. Let’s unlock the mind. Today, take twenty minutes to free write. And don’t think about what you’ll write. Just write.