Being a designer and a runner...

It has already been a month since I ran my first marathon, but I'm just now coming up with the best way to plug it into my design blog. I have had a bit more time on my hands in the last few weeks, post marathon and I have done a lot of reflecting and planning for the road ahead. One thing I have always pondered, in my day to day, and on many of my long runs is the fact that my two passions of running and designing clash with each other. How can I wake up for a morning run, but stay up until all hours taking full advantage of my creative juices? Through many of my runs I attempted to find the solution, a solution that would keep both, but not sacrifice quality and continue to satisfy me. An easy solution, but not to my liking, is not to train for marathons to do races of a much smaller scale, ones that would not require as many hours. But now weeks after the marathon is complete and I have not yet set my next running goal, I have twice as much time to focus in on my freelance and yet I find myself struggling to find the focus I need and so I loop back and think to myself, maybe running and designing actually work together better than I thought?

Running has a number of benefits both physical and mental. To me the physical is the extra bonus, but the mental game is the one that challenges you and makes you stronger. The beauty of the marathon is that it truly pushes you past a point that you didn't know you could reach. It wears you down and then it rewards you in ways you never thought were possible. For me I have discovered that running keeps me focused, it makes me passionate and ultimately it sparks my creativity! Yes the schedules don't work out too well, but you figure it out and make it work.

Not to mention this post, one that has been waiting a month to be published, has finally been written... post run and post designing tonight.

The image below is a representation of all the accomplishments met while training and designing before the marathon. The biggest one of them all is establishing Moss Design Co. in January with my partner in crime Ben Moss. And as for my next marathon, I entered the lottery for Chicago!