I don’t know why or how, but things have gotten better.

After two days of hobbling about, I was a bit hesitant to pull on the sneaks for my scheduled Monday run. All the same, run number two seemed a little early to start falling behind schedule. So after a day that started at four in the morning and included a career-day style trip to Portland, I suited up and headed out.

As fortune had it my friend Ty has decided that now is a great time to get in better shape, so he volunteered to come along. I was concerned about keeping up with him – Ty being quite a bit taller than me. But as it turns out, being tall makes you heavier and being heavier makes running harder, so I more or less did just fine.

The best part was we settled on a slow, steady pace, and for the first time I understood what everyone has been saying about “running at a conversation pace.” We managed to talk for the entire forty minutes of running.

Actually, the best part was that we ended our run by meeting up with Nopporn and getting in a hot tub. But, dare I say it? This run was kind of… fun.

I am so very, very sore.

I am a kind of sore that I don’t remember ever being before – though it’s likely that I was this kind of sore many times when I rowed on the crew team my freshman year of college. But that was eleven years ago now, and I don’t remember it.

This is the kind of sore that makes me understand what it must be like to be old, with a body that you don’t feel you can trust: I need to lean on something in order to stand up, stairs make me flinch, and I caught myself walking down a hallway with my hand on my hip for support. I feel eighty and then some.

The sad part of all this is how little it took to get me here. I ran just three and a half miles. Slowly. It didn’t even take an hour. Just as a refresher here, a marathon is twenty six point two miles.

My Saturday morning started at seven o’clock. Did you know that it’s still dark at seven o’clock in the morning? It was news to me. Which tells you something about my usual schedule. But on this particular Saturday morning my room filled with the rousing Dutch favorites Acda en de Munnik at seven on the dot. I wasn’t as bleary as expected, because nervousness about the running had kept my sleep light and nervous. I fumbled around my room, edgy and distracted, pulling on those items of my hiking gear that I thought could transition to running: a wicking nylon jersey, clunky trail running shoes, clingily unflattering pants that I would usually never think of wearing all on their own. And I drove to the park.

About twenty people, similarly outfitted, were huddled on the sidewalk, blowing into their hands and making quiet introductions. It was clear from the bright eyes and high ponytails that many of them were intimately familiar with this time of the day, but there was a fair share of stunned and sedate as well.

I assumed that, since so many of us were beginners, our coach Phil would lead some sort of physical and emotional warm-up – stretching, advice, and so on. Instead it was more of, “Well, let’s go!” And off we went. I actually stood there for a moment thinking, so, I just run now? And, since that seemed to be what everyone else was doing, I did.

We ran on a bark trail and on the roadsides, under gray but mercifully dry skies, passing dog walkers and lots of cars. I started out in the front with a regular runner named Tracy who chatted casually to my increasingly brief, breathless responses. Then I fell back a bit and introduced myself to Jenny, a graduate student I had coincidentally met the day before on campus. She, too, seemed to carry a disproportionate role in our conversation, and I started to worry that my teammates will think I am uninteresting instead of just terribly out of shape. When she mentioned finishing up her dissertation, I was able to croak out with my first genuine optimism of the morning, “Really! Tell me all about it!”

For the last half or so I ran on my own, somewhere in the middle of our stretched-out pack, trying not to feel too sick and telling myself that my only goal for the day was to finish the run without stopping to walk. And I did.

Tonight is the Eugene kickoff celebration for Team In Training. This means that I will meet the other folks here who are training for the Mayor’s Midnight Sun marathon, and I will meet my coach… but most importantly it means that now I’m pretty sure I have to start actually running. I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, since the specter of running has been hanging over my head for several weeks now, I’m relieved to just get started already. After all, maybe it won’t be as bad as I fear. On the other hand, there’s the fear. Have I mentioned that I don’t like running?

I am fairly confident that this training will involve a number of unpleasant things, things such as getting up really early, getting up really early on Saturdays, feeling sore, being out of breath a lot, feeling nauseous, being overbooked, and being exhausted. The secret of course is that not so deep down I like all of these things. Except being nauseous. There’s absolutely nothing redeeming I can think of about nausea. But nausea aside, all the other stuff feels good almost immediately after the initial unpleasantness. And I know that. So why does this whole thing have such a looming quality?

This weekend in lieu of the zombie cardio room I went snowshoeing. Snowshoeing is everything good about being active. It starts with sunshine, works up a good sweat, takes a break for snowball fighting and tree identification, and ends with a particularly fulfilling whole-body exhaustion. Since I am not yet in good enough shape to carry on a conversation while snowshoeing, it also provided some nice quiet thoughtful time under big trees.

Quiet thoughtful time has not been my specialty lately. Lately I’ve been trying to finish my master’s thesis, and trying to figure out what to do after I finish my master’s thesis, and trying to learn lots of plants so that I know at least as much as the students in the plants class I’m teaching. I’ve also developed an unfortunate West Wing affliction that – since I have no TV – can only be treated with DVDs containing upwards of six programming hours that I tend to watch all in one go. I realize this is not the best use of my time, but the bearded guy brought the press woman that goldfish, which kind of got to me in an embarrassing way, and now I want to see what happens.

Anyway, the snowshoeing was good for thoughtfulness, and then at the top (or at least what we decided to call the top, which was perhaps not actually the highest point one might have reached) we ate cheese and nuts and bread, and it was satisfying in that way that food is only satisfying when you have just climbed up something. And then we ran down.

Since all I’ve done so far is complain about running and running-related activities, perhaps you are wondering something along the lines of, why did you sign up for a marathon, moron?

Well, you know those lists you make of things you want to do before you die? I’ve made those lists. Those lists are important to me. When I die I really don’t want my last thought to be I really wish I’d done (that thing)! And as my lists have grown and evolved with my tastes and interests, one thing has remained constant: running a marathon has never appeared.

It’s not that I’ve thought about it and decided I was uninterested. It’s that a marathon was so far out of the realm of my interests that I never even considered it. It would have been like listing “develop gills” or “surgically remove pinkies.” It wasn’t like I paused, pen to paper, and thought, “Hmmm, do I really want to put this down? Nah.”

On the other hand, I have often considered doing a triathlon. Triathlons involve swimming, which I enjoy. Additionally, they are only one-third running. But most importantly, the name triathlon has inescapable grandeur. Triathlons seem majestic, Olympic. You’re not going to find heroes of Greek mythology in the cardio room. They’re out completing triathlons.

Also my friends Erin and Sharon have competed in triathlons, and they both kick ass.

Alas, my current fitness state being what it is, any sort of –on would require serious training that I don’t know how to accomplish on my own. When Sharon did her race in San Francisco, she trained through Team in Training, a nonprofit associated with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Athletes who sign up with them agree to raise a sum of donations, and TIT provides coaches, workshops, and connections to other participants. Sharon raised thousands of dollars for the society with her participation. It seemed like the way to go.

Unfortunately the Eugene TIT is not training for any triathlons this season: only runs, walks, and bikes. The walking wouldn’t be enough of a kick in the ass, and the biking would require an expensive new bike. It was either a marathon or three more months of laptop-illuminated immobility. The jury is out on which would be better for my general well-being, but at least the marathon is likely to inspire more sponsors.

I just got back from the gym.

I’ve been to the UO gym before, for dance and yoga and weights classes, but today was my first venture into the cardio room. I have been in cardio rooms before, and I did not particularly want to go back. Cardio rooms make me uneasy – all those skinny bouncing people staring blank-eyed into some middle distance under fluorescent lights, doing the same thing en masse in total isolation. Cardio rooms are the Edward Hopper paintings of the fitness universe.

I got on one of those machines that makes me feel wobbly and off-balance and started running without going anywhere. Talley hopped on the machine next to me and enthusiastically punched in some workout for burning calories; I chose one with a single big “hill.” Talley is not someone who would describe herself as peppy or cheerful, but after ten minutes on the machine she had the rosy upbeat demeanor of an aerobics instructor. After ten minutes I wanted to see what would happen if I leaned over and shoved her off. But I was too out of breath.

Not that this comes as any surprise to me, but I am not particularly in shape. My average day involves forty minutes of easy biking and twenty flights of stairs. I eat relatively well and don’t drink too much, and I’ve even given up the monthly cigarette. I could walk all day no problem.

But endurance: not my thing. So, a marathon.

Let’s just start this with a simple truth: running for the sake of running is not something that I do. When it comes to athletics I enjoy team sports, water, and the sorts of activities that might either be featured in Outside magazine or result in something tangible, like a table or pile of firewood. Running is none of these things.

I don’t like fancy colorful sneakers. I don’t like running shorts. I don’t want a runner’s body and I don’t want a portable music device velcroed to my arm.

Those women who stand at stoplights jogging in place make me nervous. I’ve only known two hardcore runners personally, and I dated them both, and they were both freakishly bad boyfriends.

So I’m going to run a marathon.

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