Fine, I’ll Run Vertically

I‘m not athletic. I played tennis and volleyball in high school, but the only reason I wasn’t cut the first day of try outs was because I graduated with 50 kids. So the fact that I’ve been running 4-5 days a week for the past 8 weeks basically qualifies me for sainthood. (Ok, fine, it just makes up for my nightly glass of wine and piece of chocolate.)

Even when I was at my most athletic (i.e. playing high school sports badly), this was what I wanted to do on cardio days:

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And as soon as I hit college, my attitude became this:

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(Run when your life depends on it, but otherwise, skip it and watch an episode of Gilmore Girls/Downton).

So when I decided a few months ago that I absolutely HAD to stop being so flippin’ lazy (and, you know, keep fitting into my clothes), I started running.

My attitude the first day:

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(Yes, even the stripping seemed desirable. I was dripping sweat even if I had only run 5 of the 20 minutes I spent outside exercising.)

Within a few weeks, though, it got easier. You know, if easier can be defined as I don’t think I’m going to die the whole time I’m outside.  Easy enough that I envision myself looking like this…:

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…when we all know that I probably look like this:

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But even if I look like Phoebe (my friend and neighbor promises me I don’t, but she’s always so encouraging that I suspect that she lies), I’m proud of myself for doing it.  And I’m trying to convince myself that I’m going to keep it up once the weather is below freezing. Because I like fitting into my clothes.

So what about you? Have you been doing anything good for you that you hate? Do you run marathons? Or are you a horizontal runner?