The Gigantic Sauna

Imagine a sauna. The hottest, steamiest, most scorching sauna you can think of. Now picture that sauna stretching...extending...growing...until it has about a mile radius. That's one heck of a huge sauna. Now imagine you just got home from work and it's time to relax a little bit. And what better way to relax then spending some time in a nice sauna? So you open the sauna door...wow, that is scorching. The heat just pounds you in the face the moment you step in. You immediately start to sweat. Now you move to a bench to sit down and relax....but wait....there is no bench! All of a sudden, you feel something forcing you to run. NO! You don't want to run! You feel as though you're being pushed, tortured as you run. The mind-numbing heat dries up your throat and makes it hard to breathe as your legs move painfully under all the stress. You run in the awful, miserable, deadly heat of the hottest sauna you've ever entered. You run and run and run until you feel that nothing could be worth this. Not even the absence of love handles.
That last part may not have made much sense, but that scenario is exactly what happened to me the other day when I went running. If you've been reading my blog, you probably noticed that I have been running in the mornings at around 6:00. Well, after trying it once, I found that I have a great deal more energy at night. So I started evening runs. And two nights ago was the hottest run I have ever taken. I literally began to sweat before stepping off of the front porch. It was one of the hardest things I have physically ever done. But you know, it ended up being a really good run. And I haven't informed my blog readers of this yet (the two of you that actually read it), but I am now running a hefty 1.9 miles per day. And walking 1.1. That's up seven-tenths from what I had previously been running. It's getting a little easier. And while the pain during the run may be way worse than anything I've ever been through, the feeling I get when I finish is well worth it. There's nothing better than that feeling of accomplishment.
One thing I wanted to write about, though, was something that happened on that awful, sauna night of running. Out where I run, not a whole lot of cars pass by. Which is a good thing, the way I'm swerving all over the road. But once in a while, I will have a car pass me. And that night, as I was running back towards my house, a big black Buick passed by on the right, going in the same direction as me. As it passed, I noticed a tiny hand poke out of the halfway-rolled down back window and wave at me. I couldn't see the child it belonged to--all I could see was that little hand, but the child couldn't have been any older than a toddler. That hand just kept waving and waving at me until the car was out of sight. It actually made my whole night. It also made me greatly appreciate my 16-month-old daughter, Abby. She is so amazingly precious--honestly the cutest child I have ever seen (and I don't think I'm saying that just because I'm her Daddy, but who knows?). I feel so lucky to have such a special little girl in my life, and I hope I never take her for granted. I love being her Ga Ga.