On Friday night I went jogging for the first time since I was in college. And the beginning of college at that. I used to run, or at least attempt to run, every day during my freshman year when I was eighteen/nineteen and in much better shape than I am now. But I hated every minute of it. It was pure torture so I stopped running when I dropped out of Air Force ROTC. So why did I go jogging on Friday? Well, I went to the doctor after work that afternoon for my post-op appointment and he gave me the green light to start exercising again. He said I could do whatever I wanted as long as it didn’t hurt. This is exactly what I was hoping to hear. For the last week or so I’ve been leisurely walking around my neighborhood for about an hour every night to make sure I meet my daily step count goal, but it’s not much of a workout. I really miss my spinning classes, but I couldn’t even wait three days to start exercising again! So on Friday night I threw on one of the new pairs of workout pants I bought at the Old Navy their July 4th sale and hit the streets. My goal was just to walk a bit faster than I had been recently, but after about fifteen minutes I decided to try something a little crazy. I started jogging. Slowly. OK, extremely slowly. But it was jogging. I made it about two blocks before I had to stop. No big surprise considering I haven’t jogged in fifteen years (and I was terrible at it back then). After walking a couple of more blocks I jogged another short interval. I repeated that one more time before something changed. It was like a switch flipped. The fourth time I started jogging I didn’t feel like my heart was going to crawl out of my chest after a minute or two. I wasn’t out of breath and I didn’t feel like I was going to die (the way running usually makes me feel). It was incredible! I stopped after about half a mile, not because I had to, but because I didn’t want to push myself too hard. I managed to complete two other half-mile intervals before the end of my outing. That’s more than I’ve ever run in my life. I was so surprised! However I knew I was going to pay for it the next day. But that’s a story for another day. Will I keep up the jogging? You’ll just have to come back later and find out!