Moving My Body Brings Me Gratitude

Caitlin McColl
beautiful choices
Published in
4 min readMay 6, 2024

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Photo by Donald Giannatti on Unsplash

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I wasn’t sure whether to write about this here (in the Beautiful Choices publication) or in my running publication Run With Intention. Because it’s about running, but at the same time, it isn’t really. I think running is just something that allows us to experience our lives and ourselves in a different way — to connect to ourselves more deeply — more primally.

Today I ran my second half marathon distance (21km/13.1 miles). It wasn’t a race, I just wanted to run the distance around my area. It took me 3 hours — because I ran with with run/walk intervals.

As I ran around my neighbourhood, interspersed with walking to help conserve energy, I did some grounding exercises — checking in with my body with a body scan; checking in emotionally asking myself how am I doing — really; checking in with my five senses as I ran — things i could see, hear, smell, taste and touch — really connecting with my environment — just for a short spell, not the whole three hours — I was reminded at how grateful I was to be running, that I can run, that I can move my body through its own power.

Even when I was at 18km (11 miles) and my legs were starting to hurt, and at an earlier time…

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Caitlin McColl
beautiful choices

Writer on mental health, grief & loss, mindfulness, running, life musings (+ fiction and poetry!). ❤️coffee & dogs. Vancouver 🇨🇦