running - 227 days to go

 I didn't want to go for a walk after work today, but it was a beautiful late summer evening, so I talked myself into lacing up my sneakers.  I made a deal with myself that I only had to walk on the flat sidewalks near my house and then I could go home.  But once I walked that for about 20 minutes or so, I was feeling good and decided to go down a hill and walk on a wooded path to enjoy some of the final glimpses of green this season.

I've been feeling pretty good about my progress.  I've been moving my body frequently.  I'm eating more healthily.  (I have absolutely nothing good to snack on in the house.  In one desperate move, I had to scrounge some 8 year old M&Ms to satisfy a chocolate craving.), but my weight is down since July.  Yesterday morning, I was delighted to step on the scale and find that I have lost a Calliope and a half.  Somehow measuring in cats seems more meaningful than measuring in pounds.  

During my walk today, I made it to the end of the wooded path and started to turn around, I thought about a conversation I had a few weeks ago with a high school friend named Mike who has taken up running.  When I told him that I ran a 10 mile race in 2007, and that I was really, really slow, and hadn't really run since, he pointed out that my time in 2007 was faster than the race I didn't run in 2008 (and '09, '10, '11 . . .).  Something about that stuck with me.  Why not try--try--to run.  If I didn't like it, I didn't have to do it again.

I had downloaded a Couch to 5K app while chatting with my friend.  Over the past couple of weeks, it kept sending me these nagging messages asking me if I was ready to get started.  Finally, I was.  I opened the app, put on a Spotify "Bridgiefit" playlist I had thrown together a while back, and found myself listening to "Eye of the Tiger" just as the app prompted me to run for 30 seconds.  

That's not very many seconds.  I shuffled along, feeling self conscious about my lumbering body as I nodded to (and avoided eye contact with) the other people on the path, but I soon realized that whatever I was doing was better than what I did yesterday!

I made a strategic error by deciding to try running on the uphill part of my journey, but by the time I arrived home, I had done several run/walk intervals.  Will I do it again?  It felt . . . okay.  Not bad exactly.  But not good either.  We'll have to see . . .