Kimberly Emerson

I told myself it couldn’t happen to me.  I had too much sense, and not enough energy.  I was safe.  But now I have to admit it, to myself and to everyone reading this blog.

My name is Kimberly, and I am a jogger.

But how, you may well ask.  How did this happen to a nice girl like you?  You wanted to lose weight, and lost your mind instead?  Don’t you know what joggers are like?  They run when it’s icy cold and when it’s unbearably hot.  They mow innocent pedestrians down on city streets.  They dress in neon.  Weren’t you warned?  For the love of God, why?

As with many things in my life, it was my brother’s fault.

Okay, we’ve been over the blame-shifting thing in previous posts, and the fact remains that it was my decision.  But it was still Geoff’s idea.  Last year, I talked him into walking the Revlon Breast Cancer 5K.  (More on that later.  The short story is, my mom is now cancer free, thank God and all his angels at Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital.)  Anyone who’s ever been on a charity walk or run knows you do a lot of standing around in the morning.  You are required to show up at an ungodly hour on a weekend morning.  I think Geoff and I got to that one at 7:15am, for a 9:00am start time.  We wound around the parking structure and ended up parking on the 4th floor.  (Note to self: when parking to go for a long walk, check to make sure the parking structure has an elevator.)  From the parking structure, we walked across the USC campus (probably half a mile) and wound our way through Exposition Park (maybe another quarter mile) in order to find the main grouping, outside the Coliseum.  When we arrived, there was a large group of enthusiastic folks, sporting witty signs about breast cancer.  By this point, it was perhaps 7:40, and we realized that we had a while to wait until the walk got started.  While we waited, Geoff noted that the runners got to line up first and start at 8:45.  “Next year we should run it,” he remarked.  “Sure,” I said, impressed that Geoff was awake enough to make jokes this early in the morning. 

The rest of the day did nothing to change my mind.  We walked the five kilometers in slow motion.  There were so many walkers that it felt less like taking a walk and more like trying to get out of the theater after a Saturday matinee of Wicked.  We added another three-quarters of a mile onto our trek in order to get back to the car, and had to walk up three flights of stairs in the parking structure.  (Check for an elevator.  SERIOUSLY.)  Geoff had a blister on his foot, and I was hot and tired.  We did not look like potential runners.

I forgot all about the conversation.  Months later, I was at Geoff’s house to watch the opening ceremonies to the Olympics.  (Geoff has a nice big flat-screen TV.  I don’t.)  As we were watching, a McDonald’s commercial came on.  All the athletes were professing their undying devotion to the new fried chicken sandwich.  Geoff remarked sagely that the woman holding the sandwich had six-pack abs, and clearly had not eaten in McDonald’s for some time.  They showed her event with her name on the ad, and we could see that she was a runner.  “I can’t take running,” I remarked to Eric, Geoff’s roommate.  “I can walk for long distances, but I can’t run.”  Eric and I were commiserating about what a horrible, evil thing running is, when Geoff looked at me and said innocently, “But Kim, you have to get into running.  We’re doing that 5K next year.”

Oh, good Lord, I thought.  He’s serious.

And indeed, serious he was.  He told me all about the running that he’d started doing, and the progress he’d made.  He directed me to a website called Couch Potato to 5K.  (Google it if you’re interested – there are several.)  I gave him a grudging assurance that I would try.  I would have been a lot less nice had I not wanted access to the big flat screen TV for another two hours.

Armed with a plan, I looked up the site.  Picking one of couch potato-luring sites at random, I looked over the instructions.  Start by running in short spurts, it said.  Walk for five minutes to warm up.  Run for one minute, then walk for 90 seconds.  Then run for another minute, and walk for another 90 seconds, etc., until you’ve been at this for twenty minutes.  Walk five minutes to cool down.  Well, I thought, that doesn’t sound too terrible.  I can do that.

The first time I tried it, it wasn’t awful.  It wasn’t fun or invigorating or life changing, like I was promised, but it wasn’t bad.  Forcing myself to run for a whole minute at a time was odd.  I got a little winded and wanted to stop, but I pushed through the pain.  No problem.

The second time was a different story.  It was ghastly.  I ached and panted my way through the isolated minutes of running.  By the time I was half way through the run/walk section, I had cursed my brother out in very colorful and creative ways and decided that this was just his diabolical scheme to inherit my car.  I made a mental note to tell my mother to make sure that when they found me dead in the middle of this sadistic exercise, as someone inevitably would, my brother would not profit in any way.

I told this story to my best friend Kimberly.  (No, I am not referring to alter ego, I really do have a best friend whose name is also Kimberly.  She’s been a feature in my life for over twenty years and trust me, you cannot make a joke about this that we haven’t already heard.  Kim One and Kim Two, the Kims, Kim Squared, whatever, it’s been done.)  Upon hearing my plan to kill him first, so that his evil intrigues would be thwarted, she suggested that maybe I just needed to run slower.  I told her if I went any slower I’d be walking.  Just go through the motions, she told me.  It’s better than fratricide. 

I tried.  (And steered clear of Geoff, to avoid temptation.)  It worked, sort of.  By day three, I was barely moving, and I wasn’t enjoying myself, but I wasn’t in pain.  It was an improvement.

After the first week, the website recommended increasing the amount of running time.  Fat chance, I told it, and continued on at the present pace for another week.  It was increasingly less of a struggle.  Still not a rollicking good time, but okay.  Why didn’t they start out this way in junior high? I wondered.  Maybe I wouldn’t have hated it so much.  I cancelled the contract on my brother’s life.

After two weeks I summoned up all my courage and moved up to Step Two, running for 90 seconds and walking for 90 seconds.  Much the same as the first go-round, the first day was okay, the second not so much.  At least this time I knew that improvement was probably on the way. 

In this fashion, going at least two weeks for every one on the list, I worked my way up.  I saw small improvements.  Some days were a step back, some a step forward.  Somewhere in there, I even experienced a strange moment where running almost felt good.  I also began to notice an improvement in my spirits after I finished running.  I suppose this falls into the same category as hitting your thumb with a hammer so that it will feel really good when you stop, but it was something.  Increasingly, I noticed that remembering how wonderful I’d feel about myself after I finished running was enough incentive to get me to start.  Along the way, while walking/running, and watching what I ate, I managed to lose twenty pounds.  I even kept it off at Christmas, when I only watched food go from my fork to my mouth. 

The whole transition occurred so gradually, I didn’t realize what was happening until I visited friends over a long weekend.  I was driving to Northern California, but I didn’t leave until 10:30 am, so that I had time to go running first.  I didn’t see the truth until I heard myself telling them, “I have to make time to go running on Monday, so I stay on schedule.”  By the time I realized what I had said, I knew it was too late.  I was one of Them.

I’m trying to be calm about it, telling myself that I can be a runner and a normal human being, but when they predicted rain for this weekend, I found myself thinking, “Maybe I’ll still go, if it’s not raining hard.”  I fear that for the rest of my life I’ll be struggling for balance on the Great Seesaw of Jogging Sanity.

It could be worse.  I could be Geoff.  He’s now signed up to run a marathon.  And before you suggest that I try it, Geoff, let me remind you that I have the hit man’s number on speed dial.

Tags: exercise, humor