The alarm was five-thirty. The river path was slick with frost. Luna had the pillow.
I'd been running along the Göta River for years, but training for a half-marathon was different. There was a specific date, a specific distance, and the plan I'd committed to wouldn't bend for cold weather. Luna would stretch across my warm pillow with the magnificent indifference of cats while I pulled on running tights in the dark. Some mornings the temperature was below zero, some mornings the river path was slick with frost. Every logical argument was against going out. I went anyway. On mat, three evenings a week, Sara noticed my hamstrings were tighter than usual, my hips were holding more. 'Your body will teach you something,' she said one evening in March. It was the kind of thing teachers say... I wrote it in my journal without quite grasping what she meant. I understand it now, or I'm beginning to.
What kept you going when everything was telling you to stop?














