RUN, RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN

I haven't been outside running since maybe October.  I haven't been on a treadmill since maybe November.  I've done some indoor cross-training but nothing like the indoor/outdoor routine I had going last summer.  Couple my lack of dedication with the Thanksgiving-Christmas holiday season, and I am left with no energy and a noticeable paunch.

Not attractive.

I developed a nasty head cold three weeks ago.  I thought I had recovered until I woke up Saturday, when I realized I had enough fluid in my lungs to drown a small army.  Prone to pneumonia, this simply will not do.  So Sunday morning, the day the weather finally breaks into the 40's, I do what any sane sick person who hasn't been exercising regularly would do: I go running.

Not attractive.

I debate where I am going to go.  My best bet would be a track since it's a reliably even surface.  The drawback is that someone might actually see me struggling along, and I am in no mood to have senior citizen runners pass me by.  I often walk for miles around town, through the bird sanctuary at the prep school, or to one of the larger garden cemeteries, which makes for a four mile round trip, but I decide I don't feel like dragging a water bottle along with me.  As a matter of fact, I want to pack as lightly as I can.

Where I live is halfway up a huge hill from the Shawsheen River.  I also live within a circle of churches.  There's a Catholic church at one end of my street, a Baptist church up the side street, an Episcopal church directly behind my house, a Protestant church at the corner at the top of the hill, and two small cemeteries line the road that connects with the other end of my street.  The road between the Catholics and the Baptists is steep and goes past the public library.  The street that connects the Catholics to the Episcopalians is a better grade -- still uphill but not as sharp an angle.  The downgrade behind the Episopalians and the Protestants is steep and long.

I decide to run-walk the church loop that connects the Catholics to the Episcopalians to the Protestants to the cemeteries.  Though I do love the Baptists (our Girl Scout troop met there for years), the hill is just too hard an incline after not running for so long. 

The loop is probably a quarter mile, maybe a little more.  I start by running up the hill, walking the straight-away, then running down the big hill.  I walk-run up my street, stop for a drink of water I have strategically hidden by a fence post in my driveway, then head in for round two. 

I run up the hill again but stop about 25 yards short of the stop sign.  My lungs are on fire.  Already.  I am prone to exercise-induced asthma, but ... really?  So soon?  Then I walk walk walk past the Episcopal church and run run run between the cemeteries then sip sip sip water in the driveway.

I am about to head out for round #3.  My goal is to complete four loops around the neighborhood, but my cold-infested lungs will have none of it.  I hack up a good portion of whatever mucus-laden crap is coating my insides and sit on my stoop while desperately trying to catch my breath.

Not attractive.

I. Am. Out. Of. Shape. 

But now I have a loop and a goal.  Maybe eventually I will be able to do the loop backward, and run up the steep hill rather than run down it, get back to where I was last fall.  I don't know, and right now I don't care.  I survive my re-admittance to the world of training.  At my age and in this weather, I'll take the little victories as they come.

Now, if you don't mind, I think I'll collapse on my couch.