Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Getting Off on the Right Foot

After a fabulous dinner with Archna at Midtown I got propositioned. My friend Ed asked if I wanted to run....at 9:30 tonight. The weather couldn't have been better. And I dig all things impromptu. The Universe was also sending me a message: "Earth to Jen, this is the week you're supposed to exercise." With my self-tested theory that a person can stick with anything for a week, I did a week without cheese and several weeks sans coffee. Last week I roughed it and included more fiber in my diet. It was time to bite the bullet and put off further procrastination. Darn. Exercise, here I come. Please be nice to me.

I needed some inspiration. Enter Ed. Here's the thing about Ed and running. He can finish a mile in 5 minutes...without any help. It's tremendous. And he's so in love with running. I thought maybe his addiction would rub off on me. It hasn't yet. I'll give it a little more time. Maybe a day or two.

Twenty seconds into our run he started goofing off. I couldn't stop laughing. He didn't hear me. His iTunes was on full blast. He zigged and zagged through the streets and I wondered if I'd make it through all this ridiculous fun. My inner mantra was less than stellar: "You are not cut out for running. You won't make it." But make it I did...a whole mile to Border's with a long break in between...and a mile back. It wasn't pretty. I wanted to hurl. My head throbbed. The ears were aching. Did I mention I wanted to hurl? I guess no exercise in months will do that to a person. Yikes!

I'm nevertheless thankful to my running guru for getting me off my you-know-what and making it burn. We'll see if I fall in love with running. I'll probably just fall. But I'll have a lot of laughs while doing it.