Ouch

Note to self: If you've only gone running four times in your entire life (1. When you had to run the 50-yard dash for a grade school PE class, 2. When your freshman gym class was made to run six times around the U.P. track oval without a break and you were silently wishing, while you felt your heart burning a hole through your chest, that the teacher would shrivel up and die, 3. When, instead of playing some less-agitating badminton, your friends had the bright idea of taking a run around Camp Karingal, and while you felt your heart burning a hole through your chest you wished that they and the rest of the world would shrivel up and die, and 4. When you very recently went for that 6AM jog along the beach at Pueblo por la Playa), jogging (technically, "jalking", jogging (20%) and walking (80%)) twice around the U.P. oval on a Sunday morning with your more experienced sister will most certainly end up in muscle pain.

Omega Pain Killer has been my good friend since Monday morning. My calves and my ankles are as stiff as plywood, and I reek of liniment. The only comfortable way to walk is to drag both feet across the floor. I am in pain but I am masochistically enjoying it. I've agreed to go jalking again next Sunday with the more experienced sister who runs in head-to-toe Adidas, and to seal my commitment I have purchased a better pair of shorts and acquired a free and barely used Clima-lite top from cousin Yami-chan (yasashii ne! domo arigato!). Ever since I took that morning jog at the beach last month (I honestly only did it because I wanted to break in my new Nikes), I've been thinking about running. I hated running before, but now I'm starting to kind of like it. Go figure. It might be the MTV effect of having music playing into my ear from an i-Pod while my feet are pounding on the pavement. It might be because I feel this urgency to find every possible way to defy ageing and stay in shape before I turn forty.

Even if it might mean that I'll have to take a bath in liniment, even if my ankles and calves might feel like cement, come Sunday I will go running with the Adidas-clad sister again, and I won't be content with just two circuits around the Oval. I'll do three, and I promise I won't regret it.

He's 38 and he still looks fabulous. If he can do it, so can I.