Woke up this morning to beautiful giant flakes of snow falling from the sky. Figured it seemed like a waste to go all the way to the gym just to run on a treadmill in a room with no windows. So instead I strapped on my running shoes, donned my cold-weather running gear, and headed out into the snow. It was beautiful and would have been fantastic if I was a little bit better at the whole running aspect of running out in the snow. To me this is yet another inspiration. By the time next winter comes around I want to be able to run out in the snow without actually feeling like I'm going to die.

Which leads me to a question. I'm 26 years old (well, technically I'm still 25 for the next 22 days), I quit smoking almost 3 years ago, and doing any kind of exercise kills my lungs. I mean really, today after running outside for three blocks I thought that my lungs had to be bleeding because they hurt so much. Now, do you think this is because I am just not used to this specific kind of exercise yet? Is it something wrong with my lungs? Am I still in recovery from the smoking (which I'm sure is true)? Is it because my cardiovascular strength just ain't what it should be? Etc, etc, etc? What's the fucking deal?????

It's my lungs that are holding me back from being a better runner ... not my body, not my heart (as far as I can tell), but my lungs. And it's really starting to piss me off.

But, on a different subject, I did manage to run three blocks before I thought I was going to die. I can remember when it was one block and then death set in. So something's improving, right?