What makes a run beautiful?

For me, tonight, pushing through allergies and heat to complete four and a half miles made for one beautiful run. Lemme tell ya, it almost didn't happen. I wanted nothing more than to curl up in a corner of my air conditioned house, but I made this dang training run happen at the last second.

I set my alarm for 6:00AM to snag the aforementioned run before everyone else got up, but my allergies got the best of me and I couldn't fathom lacing up my running shoes when I could barely breathe out of my nose. Maybe it's not allergies, though. Maybe I have a cold, but really—I think it's allergies. I have never in my life had allergies, but my mom tells me she didn't have them either until after pregnancy. So maybe I really do have allergies now. Huh. Regardless, I felt much better by day's end, so I pushed through it all to check "run" off the list at around 7:00PM this evening.

What makes a run beautiful? Rising above whatever could stop you from doing it, because there's no greater feeling in the world than looking back on that potential stopping point and saying, "eff you, I did it anyway!"

#CHIWOMENSHALF TRAINING UPDATE, WEEK 11

Nothing overly exciting to report here. I completed all of my runs this week, despite having to switch around my schedule a bit. I ran the last 8-miler with my mom and, oh boy was it hot. Hotter than I had expected, actually. We've gone from Winter to, well...Summer, it seems. Not much of a transition up in these parts, which is fine with me. I'm done with cold weather. And I'll be running the Chicago Women's Half  in the middle of June, so I really need to get myself used to some warmer runs.

Anyway.

Time for some of this:

Question: What makes your run beautiful?