You know your favourite Christmas movie when you are young. The one that you would watch over and over again until it drove your parents crazy. Mine was the one with the stop-motion animated characters, the classic Christmas movie, Santa Clause is Coming To Town. It also has the iconic song that is burned in your brain every single year, “Put One Foot In Front In Front Of The Other”. Fitting, right? Now that that, the song is burned into your brain, do you remember the pure joy that they got from just walking. Well, learning how to walk. The penguin, the reindeer, the scary guy in the nightgown with the nightcap. Everyone was in a line together, helping each other out. It was amazing. It was like a winter cha cha.

I always think of this song when I run. Did I mention I used to run. It was my way to release stress, and my way of escaping life. We used to have a treadmill at home and I would blast the music so loud during each session, (Frozen was a big hit at the time – who am I kidding, it still is) and I would jam out to “Let It Go”. Literally having my own karaoke party running. Arms flailing in the air, forget form, it was bliss.

I am the first to admit that I am afraid of many things, or cautious as I like to put it. I prefer a drink in my hand to parasailing in Mexico or even a banana boat. Call me boring but maybe I see being fearless elsewhere in my life like in business. After May 2015, my fears grew and grew beyond what I would say normal fears in life. I had triggers that would cause crippling fear. Each year I needed to make it past May 20th. I thought if I could do that I was golden. It was was a painful fear that would leave me in a cycle of anxiety trying to just make it through that time of the year. Another trigger, the time of 5:22pm. And weddings they absolutely terrified me. Another great fear for me was to run again. To be able to run brought so many whispers throughout my mind that I couldn’t escape. What if my knee and ankle give way while I am mid-course? More bruises? What if this sets me back on the progress that I have made. The big one, what if I couldn’t do it anymore.

A few days before my two year anniversary I made the decision to get back hitting the pavement or the dirt road again. To be honest, I was really scared. It was time. I needed to challenge and do this for myself, to be able to conquer this obstacle. I was terrified that I would be on my course and my leg would give way and it would be like jenga blocks taking out the most crucial piece of the puzzle and topple over. Left hip to knee, to ankle and then hit the ground ever so gracefully. It had brought me so much happiness before and I need that back in my life. It was okay to make choices to change my life for the better but it was also okay to accept the good parts of my old life too. I was going to start to run again, no matter what happens. Falls, bruises, and feeling like I am so out of shape.

Even though it had been two years, and I was still not ‘normal’, I was a new normal a new Katie fear about returning back to that state in May 2015 is always in the back of my mind. It creeps its ugly head each week, which increases my anxiety that it will last longer then I think it should and I will return to the five week stay in a new home familiar to 2015. So I made a choice. A big and exciting one.

September 24th I am running. Yes, that’s right. Running. Well, there might be walking in there, but I hope maintaining an even 1-2 pace. So it began. I had to face my fear. I had to start this journey or else I don’t think that I could ever convince myself to do this again. So I did it. I put one foot in front of the other. Even better, if you sign up to run alongside me (which I hope you do!) you will get a discount. I love sales and discounts, um hello flip app anyone? To receive your discount just sign up with my promo code “RunwithKatie”.

P.S if you want to keep up with my running adventures follow me on insta @katievil and with the hashtag #runwithkatie

So enter my goal: HarvestRun.

https://www.facebook.com/CKHarvestRun/