Running to Achieve Balance

The past few weeks have been incredibly overwhelming for some reason. I have been very busy with research, and the class I'm taking is a lot of work--which I am able to accomplish after feeling dumb for about 10 hours of working on it. Plus our doggie has had a lot of energy which is hard to deal with when we get home around 9 pm, and makes me feel bad that we haven't been devoting more time to her. Overall I have just been left feeling very overwhelmed. I have been trying to figure out how to deal with it in a constructive way, but everything I tried (yoga, taking a break to watch some Netflix, taking time to think through everything on my to-do list) just left me feeling more behind. We even put off our long run on Sunday, due to a combination of being busy and the constant rain we have been having. I felt a lot like this:

Yesterday, we finally got to the long run, and somewhere in those 9 miles I started to feel better. The run took a long time because it started raining and was getting dark, so we went into the university rec center to finish it up. Once we were done, we had to walk back to campus to get our stuff, then walk home, so the whole event took almost 3 hours. Even with that amount of time spent not working on school stuff, I felt so much better!

It's interesting how your mood can change due to random things. I'm trying to remember how great I felt after the run, so I can keep feeling that all day. :) It's easier said than done. At least it's already Thursday, woo!