In The Running

I seem to have taken up running.
I know. Nobody's more surprised than me. I'm positively allergic to exercise and I hate sweating. I don't stand when I can sit, and I don't sit when I can lie down. I take naps for fun. The only part of my body that I voluntarily move is my eyeballs when I am reading, and my forearm to bring the beverage of choice up to my mouth.
So, believe me, this decision to run was not taken lightly.

I came to the conclusion that, if I want to eat the way I want to, I'm going to have to move around a little more, lest I become the size and shape of the couch I occupy. And if there's one lesson I've learned from my parents and the generation before me, it's that if you don't use it, you will lose it; sloth makes aging considerably more difficult. So, I did some research to find out what would give me the most bang for my exercising buck, and running came up trumps.

I used to go to a gym, I tried several gyms, in fact, and I hated them, loathed everything about them. I spent the entire time working out shreiking at myself in my head, "come on, ten more minutes on this freaking horrible treadmill, keep going, keep going, is that ten minutes, OH MY GOD, it's only been two minutes, stop being such a wuss, keep walking damn it, I want to stop NOW when will it end???" It was exhausting. And the people who worked at the gym, who were decidedly puzzled at my lack of enthusiasm, would inevitably suggest going to a class, like somehow organized, scheduled torture was more appealing. And for this I paid forty bucks a month. Finally, when the kids and I went to the beach one day and I had to scale a considerable sand hill and I was wheezing and gasping like a chain-smoking geriatric, I decided that the gym was doing me no good at all, and I quit.

After a little asking and thinking, I decided that running included putting on a pair of shoes and walking out my front door and just running until I wanted to come home. Even I can manage twenty minutes out my day for that. And so I have, for a month now. And although I can't say I love running, I certainly don't hate it, which is huge for me. At least the shreiking in my head is quiet enough.