The trains in Chicago have been carrying this advertisement:

We can train you to run a marathon!

I mostly ignore the ads on the trains but for some reason this one was really attracting my attention. Then I had a phone catch-up with my friend Lillian and she mentioned that she thought she might train for a marathon.

so the whole thing had a sort of "The hand of God" vibe

Anyway I mentioned this casually to a few people, often while smoking cigarettes, who agreed that it sounded like a fine idea.

While perusing Lillian's blog I realized that she had actually gone and started the damn training (and therefore was unlikely to be interested in comparing Can't Get Started notes over a Camel Light) and she had links to her training regimen which she found online.

I went to that site and found not only a marathon training regimen but also a beginning runner's training regimen.

There is a part of me, a fairly vocal part of me, actually, that feels adamantly that I am NOT a beginner! Think of all that running I did when I lived in Georgia!!!

I moved away from Georgia, however, in 1989 and while no stranger to activity in general, running? It's been a loooooong ass time.

I should point out that I started riding my bike to work a few days/week in May while the weather was still iffy and now that the weather has moved from iffy to downright hot and humid, I hope to keep that at 5 days/week. I did this in 99 and it was great but then, of course, summer ended, so did the bike riding and I gained a lot of weight. So the theory here is that I begin running now, by the time October rolls around I'm in a running frame of mind and I can continue that even in the ice/snow/whatever.

Let me tell you, running in some ice/snow/whatever sounds pretty good right now.

The way I'm interpreting the 30 day beginner plan (notice that I don't link to it because I don't care to be contradicted on this) is that you run 30 minutes/day for 30 days and really the point is to just get out there and move for 30 minutes. If you walk 28 minutes and run two of them, well so be it, you have 30 days to build up your stamina.

Did I mention that I rode my bike to work today (18 miles round trip!)?

I've decided, here on day 2 of this endeavor, that I might as well go as soon as I get home since I'm already sweaty and gross and it isn't as though I will become more inclined to go for a jog after I'm showered and fed.

Timberlands OFF adidas ON out the door.

I didn't actually track how much of the time was spent jogging, how much walking. I'd be happy if it was half and half. But I have 30 days. Here's two observations from my 30 minutes in my 'hood.

1)If you are a woman, standing at a bus stop with a man, repeatedly shrieking "These are my glasses!" does not seem to be an argument-winner.
2)If you are a student at the Yeshiva you can play basketball in the hot, evening sun but you still have to wear a white shirt, black trousers, and a velvet yarmulke so really there are, in fact, worse ways of exercising than the one I was engaged in.