you say right, i go left

Jazzercise, it turns out, is fun, energizing, and surprisingly enjoyable - but not for the faint of heart. I love the kickboxing elements - to paraphrase Caryn, just pretend you're at work.

Had some time to kill this afternoon so I went to get new neoprene weights from Sports Authority. Let me just say that starting with, instead of working up to, 4-lb. weights was a clear illustration of my own naivete regarding structured aerobic exercise of this type. I pictured middle-aged ladies in visors, Pointer Sisters on a portable CD player; I got my ass handed to me by (among others) a sweet-looking 70-year-old taking it to the house with Chris Brown. So much for your granny's aerobics class.

Tomorrow - day 2. Btw, the morning ab regime, and now this, are so much more enjoyable than running around in the dark - but I need to get the wRunning in somewhere. We are gearing up for GAR in February, and when the wedding is behind us, can seriously entertain the possibility of entering the marathon. As I was buying new shoes today (just missed the last pair of pink Saucony runners in my size; settled for blue and silver Ascics that were way more marked down, percentage-wise, but were $10 more than the Sauconys) I realized that it took me so long to wear out my old ones because I haven't increased my weekly mileage. At all. Everything else has increased in the past six months: trail speed, swim endurance, crunches and push-ups - what was flabby is now, well, less flabby. What was evenly pasty now has a gosh-awful swimsuit tan stamped on it. What was impossible no longer is. But running, running is the one thing I haven't worked on with enough dedication to see any progress. Excepting the 5K in September, running mileage has never moved beyond two miles per outing or five miles a week.

I know I have a mental block that I have to get past. From childhood, running was something I never enjoyed. I was never in a rush, for one thing. I never enjoyed beating anyone to a place because the feeling of someone closing in on me freaked me out. I was more of a "let's all skip the the finish line together!" kind of girl, and even in junior high, when a sort of insufferable sense of competition took over almost everything I did, I never wanted to be the fastest runner. Hold the longest handstand, yes; the punchiest back handspring, yes. Execute the craziest kamikaze tee-off Nagorski had ever seen, hell yeah. But running - eh. Running. Was. And. Is. Boring.

And part of what I will do to actually become the runner I want to be is to never say that again. (Well, not until the day I absolutely quit, which will not be for quite awhile, as I have just bought new shoes. :P) And to answer the Friend of a Friend, who asked Friend 1 why I would persist in an endeavor I so obviously do not love ... it's like an acquaintance from a long time ago said, doing his very best to describe me as scornfully as possible: "She is a square peg in a round hole." It was maybe the second-best compliment I ever got (the first being from my 7th grade math teacher, who must also have loved cliches: "Dear, you're a duck in the storm of life.")

So. New shoes, new outlook. Don't quite know what the outlook is, but I have to discard my "Running Is Boring" button and pick another. In the meantime, up the hill I go.