The Sanctity of the Run
From Chicken Soup for the Soul: Runners
By Luci L. Creery

Sweat cleanses from the inside. It comes from places a shower will never reach.
~George Sheehan

I ran competitively as a teenager. I was the daughter of a struggling single parent, and running was my escape from a broken home and the burden of never having enough money. Running was relatively cheap, and it took me places I would not have gone otherwise. I was even banking on a track scholarship to get me through college since my mom, then working as a minimum-wage clerk, clearly couldn’t afford my tuition.

Then, at the beginning of my senior year, I was in a terrible car accident. Before I knew it, I was stranded in a hospital bed with a shattered lumbar, a cracked pelvis, a punctured lung, and several broken ribs. Needless to say, the accident quelled my dreams. (Keep reading)