My "Ah-Ha!" moment

I don't have a picture of my running to post today. I had a moment of clarity on the treadmill last night and you just can't take a picture of that. You see, I think I have been running for the wrong reasons. I think I have been running for you and not for ME (ok, not really YOU, but you know what I mean, right??). I'm not quite sure how to say how I feel. The closest I can come is to say that I have been running to impress people, not just for me. But that's not quite right, but the closest I can come to expressing it. I need to run for ME. For my health. For my happiness. For pleasure. For fun. For an escape. Since I have been running I feel great about myself. I have lost close to 20 pounds- I didn't even know I COULD lose or NEEDED to lose 20 lbs! But I look great and I feel great. I'm not so achy anymore and I think my bones are getting stronger. I feel stronger in general. And my self esteem is higher than ever. I need to remember this as I run instead of trying to set goals that are more for other people than they are for me. I am still going to do a 5K in almost 1 month. But if I can't run the whole thing I am not going to focus on that. I am going to focus on the fact that I DID it. And I am not going to focus on the fact that there are XXX amount of people there that are faster or slower than me. I am going to focus on the fact that there are XXXXXXXXXXXX amount of people that DIDN'T come or weren't ABLE to do it in the first place. (PS- No matter how hard I tried, this still ran all the paragraphs together! So I used bold to try to separate them!)