Very First Run

I'll get into the background story of how I started this crazy venture and the specifics of what I am doing and all that a little later, but first I want to post about my very first training run!

Well, to start, there was very little actual running involved. Primarily I just walked, with about 5 1-minute bursts of running thrown in. These little snippets of running caused my face to turn a particularly lovely shade of deep violet and my lungs to heave at roughly the sound and speed of a Airbus cargo plane. I imagine this led to those who passed me during my walking times to think I am the most out of shape person ever. On a related note, I also felt like I was going to swallow my tongue at a few different points. I hope that is normal at this stage.

There are several high points, however....
First: for whatever reason, the sort of early evening time at which I chose to go running is also the time when every single dog owner within 50 blocks decided to walk their dogs, so I saw lots of cute puppyage.
Second: I actually started training for my marathon!
Third: There were actually times I felt pretty good about my running, what little of it there was
Fourth: This is by far my favorite- it somehow worked out that whenever I crossed paths with someone who was out running rather than out with their dog, I was in one of my rare running spurts, and we shared big comradely grins as we ran by each other. It felt pretty special and cool.