I took two days off at the beginning of this week. Monday I had a million unexciting errands to do and was coming back from out of town and our vacation days don’t roll over from year to year so I just took the day off to get all the laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, etc done.

Tuesday I had to go to the dermatologist to get a bunch of stuff hacked out of my skin. Wheee for possible skin cancer!

When I left the doctor’s office on Tuesday, the nurse told me that I am not allowed to work out for two weeks. Six months ago, this would have been awesome news: a medically-endorsed reason for my persistent couch-potatodom! Wahoo! Except in the past several months, I’ve really gotten into a good habit of actually being active every day. Often, it’s just a 20 minute workout dvd (apparently, for me, the actual getting out of the house and too the gym is too much when the couch is right there, beckoning, offering snacks) but I’ve even gone so far as to try a spinning class. I take exercise Very Seriously these days, it seems, if I’m willing to endure an hour with a chipper 22 year old barking “sprint up that hill!” into a microphone while I attempt not to die on my stationary bike.

So I was displeased at this instruction from my doctor. Sure, for the first couple days when I’m sore and grouchy it makes sense. But I know myself, and I know that two weeks of “off” time is more than enough to reestablish a serious lethargy habit. So I pressed the nurse on it, and she said “well, it’s mostly for cosmetic reasons, because if you pull at your stitches the scar will get bigger, and you could bust a stitch which would be very bad, but… I guess if you MUST, you could go for a jog. But nothing else. Jogging. That’s it.”

Ew. Jogging? I hate jogging. LOATHE jogging. I don’t even like the sound of the word. (Side note: my friend Tribecca, the fittest person I know in real life, insists that “jogging” is an evil word – the proper term should be “running”. I agree.) Years of asthma have taught me to believe that I am bad at jogging, that jogging causes pain and wheezing and a strong feeling like I need to stop and lie down. But, I AM trying to be healthy, plus my brother in law moved in with us two weeks ago and I have come to count on my workouts as a brief reprieve from our suddenly-crowded house, so yesterday I put on some sweats and a hat, and went for a run. Outside.

And you know what? It was kind of horrible. (Sorry, were you looking for a heartwarming story of how I conquered my fear of running, and it wasn’t that bad, and I got a huge endorphin rush? No dice.) I still, as it turns out, hate jogging. But my fitness efforts of the past several months seem to be paying off, because I was able to run for 22 continuous minutes, and when I got home and calculated my distance on gmaps pedometer, I learned I had run for 2.6 miles. 2.6! I feel like a superhero! 2.6 miles is almost a 5K!

So in an effort to keep things interesting on the fitness front, I’ve decided that I’m going to aim to run a 5K. I have yet to identify what race I’ll do, but I figure by putting it here I’ll keep myself a tiny bit accountable. Plus, I may or may not have volunteered to train for a half marathon with Nilsa (paging Crazy, party of one!) so it’s probably a good idea for me to, you know, get started on that. Wish me luck.