Jogging

Back in the 80's my dad had a shirt kind of like this one:

Dad's was gray and I'm pretty sure it had said Oklahoma State on it somewhere, too, but I have no idea why.  I also have no idea why Dad had the shirt in the first place. He's never been a jogger, he's not a collector of Garfield kitsch, he almost never wears Oklahoma State apparel.  That shirt continues to be one of the great mysteries of my childhood.

But I think, somehow, the shirt served as a touchstone for my entire world view. I've never understood the concept of jogging. It makes no sense to me why anyone would want to do such a thing.  I regard people who jog regularly with a certain amount of suspicion and mistrust. The word "jogging" itself sounds like a made up activity for third graders.

My own experience with jogging consists solely of being forced to run 3 miles a day for the first month or so of the spring soccer season. Jogging is bad enough in perfect conditions, but in the windy, 15 degree weather of January in Oklahoma, it's pure torture.  Needless to say, this is not a habit I've kept up over the years.

Until now.  My "friend" Nick tricked me into signing up for the MS Society's Mud Run, a 10k run combined with a mud-filled obstacle course.  So now I'm jogging to try to keep from having a heart attack on the course.  We're doing a "Couch to 5k Plan" that consists of three-day-per-week sessions of running and walking that supposedly build your endurance to be able to run the full 5k in 30 minutes.  It's actually going OK so far. Last night I ran two 8 minute segments with five minutes of walking in between.  That may not sound like much, but for a guy who was struggling to get to 60 seconds of jogging 4 weeks ago, it feels pretty good.  Saturday morning, I'm supposed to run for 20 consecutive minutes.  We'll see...

Coincidentally, a friend posted this video on Facebook a couple days ago. Somehow the folks at Nike are reading my mind. 

UPDATE:  

Look what Mom found!