Today’s run: 3.6 miles, 36 minutes. YT: 106.4. For two days running now, I’ve crossed paths with a man in a long, khaki kilt and yuppie combat boots, taking a morning stroll. Both times I’ve given him my customary smile. And both times he’s given me a look that makes me feel like he’s unsure how to interact with a woman while wearing a skirt.

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I’m about to present to you an idea that’s completely illegal — which is how you know immediately that it must be a GREAT idea.

Here it is:

Hiring managers should give job-seeking runners special preference. In fact, employment applications should have an “Are you a runner?” check box on them.

Why?

1. Runners are focused. They spend hours of their week in repetitive motion. They’ll carry out their projects with precision and consistency.

2. Runners are goal-oriented. They set plans and stick to them, through cramps and sun and rain and snow.

3. Runners are accustomed to suffering. You can work a runner to the BONE and he’ll keep on going. He ran 10 miles before you even got out of bed!!

4. Runners are a little bit crazy. Creativity and plucky spark, exactly what you need in an employee!

Hire a runner today!

Also: Here’s a link I liked, 5 Counterintuitive Running Tips that Actually Work. But I will never, ever take an ice cube bath. Unless maybe there’s a million dollars locked in the ice and only my body heat can unlock it.

Today’s run: 2.5 miles, 25 minutes. YT: 80.9 m. Today’s semi-successful speedwork was really an excuse not to do a long run. Curse you, last night’s second glass of sake, you limpid, delicious fairy pool. I guess I am who I am… and that makes for a delightfully contradictory preamble to the post below.

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The transformative power of running is more than inspiration. As you move from being a nonrunner, or an occasional 3-miler, to a person who runs 10K as the stretch of a leg (or heaven help me, a marathon) you are, through discipline and diligence, literally transforming yourself. You will get thinner. Your muscles will get stronger and sleeker. You will have more energy and sleep better. And if you’re me, your hangovers won’t be as bad and your blood sugar will stabilize.

But I’m not talking about a physical transformation so much as a mental one – and yet they are so closely related it’s almost like staring into a glass of water and trying to see the individual drops.

I started my running believing very strongly that I was not meant to be a “real” runner. Or at the very least, not a distance runner. We’ve all got what the self-help crowd calls “limiting beliefs.” If you’ve always been athletic, yours may manifest somewhere else. (“I’m not creative.” “I’d never have the courage.” “I can’t work the DVD player.”)  But they can be particularly powerful when it comes to exercise because these beliefs are wrapped up in our physical bodies. I remember as a child always fearing group hikes. Because I was slightly heavier than everyone else, and not particularly athletic, I thought I would be the slowest, the reddest, the huffiest and puffiest.

So guess what? I never tried to lead. I purposely brought up the rear, content with being the straggler. Or I would avoid group athletics.  Years later, as an adult with a decade of regular exercise under my belt, I realized one day on a group hike that I was actually among the fittest in the bunch.

But even today, as someone running a couple 10Ks a week, I fight the mental image of myself as someone who’s most comfortable, most herself, while at rest. Even today, I have to talk myself out of that mental image sometimes to get my butt running. And, voila, I have still other limiting beliefs to contend with – such as believing there’s no fun in stopping at one, see above.

Fake it ’til you make it, people. If your body goes through the motions enough, the mind will follow.

In the meantime, what’s your limiting belief?