Hello, my name is Margaret Carroll and I have been running at Northeastern since middle school. My first introduction to running, I’m told was at a very young age when my dad found me alone in the backyard running around for no apparent reason. When asked what I was doing and why was I running erratically around the yard, my answers were simply, “running” and looking at my dad like it was the dumbest question I had ever heard, “because I like it”. Some might say I haven’t become much more articulate than that over the years, and they’d probably be right. For many years I thought soccer was the sport for me and was even confused by a teammate’s decision to quit soccer to focus on running, but fast forward a few years and I found myself enjoying cross country and track more than soccer and made the same decision to stick to running instead. Now I’m really glad I made that choice and I have a hard time imagining life without running nearly all year round. During the few times a year between seasons, I often find myself struggling with the extra free time and excess energy. I have been continuing to run during this time (which has been keeping me sane), but it’s been a bit discouraging not to be able to compete and celebrate new PRs throughout the season with the team. I’ve been reminding myself that pushing myself now will be worth it in the fall when we hopefully have a semi normal cross country season. Still, doing school from home has given me a little bit of extra free time between classes and running. Recently this time has been spent cramming for AP exams (AP Bio was one of my favorite classes this year, but thank goodness the test is over). I’ve also been able to do some more fun things like spending time with two black labs (ages 15 months and 13 weeks) I’m raising for The Seeing Eye, working on some craft projects, and keeping in touch with friends.