On the run

Earlier this year I did something I didn't expect I'd ever do. No, I didn't volunteer to organize a Britney Spears fan club. It's something even stranger.
I took up running.
Until late last year I was pretty sure my opinion of recreational running served as pretty good proof there was no such thing as a jogging gene. My dad used to run all the time. He ran marathons. He ran ultra marathons. He ran on roads. He ran cross country. He was like Forrest Gump, only I don't think he ever met the President.
For several years straight he maintained a streak of running every day. By the time he was done nobody had any idea where he was (ba-dum bum!).
Meanwhile, my personal attitude toward jogging could be described as such: If it was done in course of another, otherwise enjoyable activity — say a game of basketball or soccer — I was OK with it. In the rare instances I needed to be somewhere faster than a brisk walk would allow, I could tolerate it. If someone was chasing me, well, I figure I'd better run. But if I'd ever said, "Gosh, I think I'll go for a quick three-mile jog?" Well, I'm pretty sure that would have been a sign some vital spring in my brain had finally come uncoiled.
I was a cross country skiier in high school, and by the time I'd graduated I figured I'd done enough running to last a lifetime.
I almost caved a few years ago. Back before biking became my exercise of choice I decided I wanted to get into better shape, and I decided running was the way to do it. So, I bought new running shoes. I bought shorts and t-shirts. I even bought an MP3 player so I wouldn't have something in my head besides my own thoughts. And I ran. Once. Maybe twice. And then I came to my senses. I eventually gave the shoes to my brother, who feels the same way I do about running but presumably found some other use for them.
I thought I was done after that. I really did. But around the time the outdoor biking season was winding down last year (say, early December) I decided I needed to find a way to keep from ballooning out of shape over the winter. That meant either riding a stationary bike, which I decided a few years ago is almost as pointless as jogging, or finding something else. I decided to give running another try, and I discovered something that surprised me: running on a treadmill is somehow less awful than running outside.
For the record, then: love biking outside, can't stand it inside; despise running outside, yet actually enjoy it when I do it in a situation that makes me feel a little like a hamster on an exercise wheel.
I have no idea why that is. Maybe it has something to do with the fact running on a treadmill doesn't require me to know where I'm going. Or maybe it's because I can watch TV while I do it. Maybe I just have something against the sun. Or maybe I just like the feedback I get running on a treadmill. On my bike I have a computer that tells me how far I've gone and how fast. Same on a treadmill.
Then again, maybe I've just managed to stick with it long enough that I can finally go more than 100 yards without collapsing in a heap. That wasn't always the case. The runs I went on a couple of years ago could probably be more accurately described as lurching staggers interrupted by frequent periods of walking — you know, to recover. When I ran last Sunday I averaged about eight minutes per mile and ran just over five miles in 40 minutes.
I was feeling pretty good about myself until later that day. Flipping through the channels I stumbled onto some kind of indoor track championships. I tuned in just in time to watch an Ethiopian woman set a world record by running 3.1 miles at a pace of just under 4:40 a mile. I never had any delusions I would ever be a world-class runner, but getting your butt kicked hurts all the same.
But let's see her write a column.