Couch to 5K, Day One: I Jogged Past Two Mailboxes

Big news, ladies: I am officially in training. There is a 5K in October, the Cedar Falls Harvest Run, the same one Megan does every year while I cheer from the curb with a thermos of cider. This year I signed up too. I clicked the button at midnight like a woman possessed and then immediately panicked.

I told Mark this morning over his coffee. He said, 'Okay babe,' the way he says 'Okay babe' when I tell him we need a new vacuum, which is to say with love and zero follow-up questions. That's fine. He'll see.

Day one of the app was a walking warm-up, then sixty seconds of jogging, then ninety seconds of walking, on and on. Sixty seconds, friends. Sixty. I have given longer pep talks to Noah about putting on socks. And yet — when that little chime went off in my earbuds and the cheerful British man said 'Begin running,' I almost cried.

I made it past two mailboxes. The Hendersons' and the one with the rooster on it. Then I had to walk. My lungs felt like a balloon someone had stepped on. Biscuit looked up at me with what I can only describe as concern.

Here is what I want to say to anyone starting from zero: two mailboxes is a beginning. Two mailboxes is more than yesterday. Two mailboxes counts. I refuse to let the version of fitness on the internet — the one with the matching sets and the green smoothies and the abs — tell me that two mailboxes does not count. It counts.

On the way home I waved at Joanne, who was deadheading her petunias in her pink bathrobe. She gave me a thumbs-up like she knew exactly what I was up to. She probably did. News travels.

By eight o'clock I was back at the kitchen island in my sweaty t-shirt making oatmeal with frozen blueberries for Emma and Noah. By nine I had walked Emma to the bus and watched her tiny backpack disappear down the road. By ten Noah and I were on the floor building a 'dinosaur hospital' out of couch cushions.

Tuesdays I work at Miller's Hardware doing the books for Mr. Miller. I love that little shop. It smells like sawdust and pipe tobacco even though nobody has smoked in there since 1998. I worked from eleven to three, and on my lunch break I ate the salad I had actually packed for myself, instead of buying a sad gas station sandwich, which is the kind of small win I'm going to keep collecting.

Picked Noah up at three, met Emma at the bus at three-thirty, did homework with juice boxes, started laundry, started dinner, ate dinner, did dishes. The choreography of a Tuesday.

It is almost six now. Biscuit is on the rug pretending she's not tired. Mark is in the shower. Two mailboxes today. Three mailboxes by Friday. Maybe a whole block by July. Maybe the finish line by October. I love you. — Lucy