See Chichi Run

It will amuse those who know me to find out that I, Chichimama have taken up running. Not marathon style running like some I know, but plod along on the treadmill or around the neighborhood at a whopping 5.5 miles an hour for 20 minutes style running. After you get off the floor and stop snickering, you might ask with a rather quizzical look on your face, "WHAT on earth possessed YOU, one of the LEAST athletic people we know, to RUN?" Let me tell you, I'm as perplexed as you.

I've been fairly religious over the past year about getting some form of exercise in at least three days a week, and over the last three or four months it has been closer to five or six days a week. First I walked, then I walked hills. Then I walked hills faster. It got to the point that no matter how I walked, I wasn't feeling like I had exercised. And that made me, well, grumpy. Apparently I have gotten addicted to exercising. (Yep, keep on laughing. Get it out of your system...)

So one day as I was walking along as fast as my short little legs could go, I thought "I bet running would be easier than trying to walk this fast." So I tried it. And I could run! Not far, not long, not fast, but I ran a good ten minutes before my inner thighs called for mercy. I finally felt like I had exercised again. Ever since then, I have been trying to run a little bit longer every other day. Today I got up to 25 minutes. I KNOW! ME! Running for 25 minutes! I didn't even do that in high school when I was on the field hockey team!

This afternoon I even found myself looking for a 5 or 10K to train for, but apparently I have pretty much missed race season in my neck of the woods, and I'm not SO crazy to do one that I'm going to shlep any further than the next town over to complete said race. But still, just the fact that I was considering such a thing makes my head hurt.

One of these days I might even lose the rest of this baby weight I've been lugging around for three years now. Maybe.