trail running and lessons

I've never liked running before, I always found it boring and bleh. I even tried running a half marathon to see if I just needed more experience and when I finished that half marathon, I vowed to never... ever... run again. And I haven't since. But after hearing that my 40 plus photo teacher has ran 50 mile marathons, I thought to myself... if she can do it, I can do it! So I asked her what her secret is and she said it was trail running.
So I headed up Dry Canyon with Miss Ayisha and we ran and ran and ran and guess what? I absolutely loved it. Crazy right? :P Now I try to run any opportunity I can get, I can't get enough of it, it's fantastic! I've always liked hiking so I guess it makes sense. There's just something about being on the mountain, completely alone, on a beautiful sunny day running the stress away. It's incredibly soothing and relaxing to me.

Today I went on the longest run I've been on so far. I started at Dry Canyon (Dry Canyon is in north Orem) and once I hit the peak of the trail, it was all downhill or flat and it was so easy to run. I just kept running. It was hard to stop because it felt so easy and was fun running down a slope. So I kept running and I kept running and I kept running and then... the trail hit a parking lot. And I realized I had ran all the way to Pleasant Grove.
I'm not going to lie and say I wasn't a little proud of myself for going so far. But I couldn't believe it had gone by so fast and so easily. So after enjoying a good sit, I turned around and headed back to my car in Dry Canyon.
Oh wow.
It was so much slower and so much harder getting back. Remember how I said it was so easy to get to Pleasant Grove? Because it was all flat or downhill? Well, that means it was all uphill on the way back. And there were some pretty steep uphill parts.
Long story short, I got back to my car after an hour and a half of running and it took me almost twice as long to get back as it did to get to Pleasant Grove.

My whole experience made me think about how easy it is to distance ourselves from our Heavenly Father and Savior. In my our life, every time I start making poor decisions and falling off the path, it almost feels natural to go the wrong direction because it's so easy and it's amazing how fast and far we can fall and before we know it, we're so far we're lost. Getting back to the Savior is definitely a much harder process. It's work, like running uphill. But it's so worth it.
Wow is it worth it.
I remember my dad always telling me when I was younger that we all make wrong choices and distance ourselves from the Savior. The key is to catch it early so that we don't have to go through the long, hard process of getting back to where we were. I think it's a valuable lesson to learn and I definitely realized that even more after today :)