Waddle Yogging

For a while now, I’ve been trying to talk myself into getting into jogging, or it could be yogging with a soft J, but whatever. I’m not sure why I’ve had this urge. Maybe it’s because I feel old and fat, or maybe it’s because my brother and his wife are world class athletes and they have inspired me. Perhaps it’s because the last two girls that have broken my heart were runners and I want to be more like them or have a chance to meet a third equally as extraordinary person. It could also be that I have too much time on my hands and I need something to fill the time. Whatever the reason, I bought some running shoes this Saturday and decided to take my first run tonight.

Rather than run along thirteenth east in the middle of rush hour with my shirt off, like so many of the runners that annoy me do, I decided to run along a trail that is near my office. It wraps around the Swaner Nature Preserve, winds through the neighborhood east of the Canyons Ski Resort, and then heads into downtown Park City past the McPolin Barn. I’m not sure where it goes from there, because that’s as far as I made it. After tying on my new shoes, I took off out of the gates like a bat out of hell. Two hundred yards later, I stopped running and had to walk. For a while I would sprint two hundred yards and then walk another bill. I soon came up to a really hot girl in sweats and a pink camisole that was walking her dogs. To impress her, I sprinted past her like white lightening and continued to trot my stuff until I was safely out of sight around the bend. At that point I doubled over in pain and began to wheeze like Boots when he coughs up the fur ball in Shrek Two. Once I regained my composure and popped my eyeball back in its socket, I looked up to see a mirage of welcomed relief in the form of a park with a drinking fountain and restrooms.

I entered the restroom and coughed up a long-term tenant from some seldom used recess of my pulmonary. Somehow looking at that milky white membrane through dancing white stars in my vision sparked inside of me an epiphany; there is more ways to run than the way you would being the wing on a 3-man fast break or while stretching a single into a double. After leaving the park, I began to slow myself down a bit, kind of trotting and waddling like a penguin, creating the illusion that I was running, but never actually taking both feet airborne simultaneously. It felt somewhat odd, and I felt somewhat femy, but I suddenly began to understand how to do this whole yogging stuff. As I reached the barn with only one walking spell, I felt I was doing much better. My heart rate slowed to that of a gerbil, and my breathing no longer sounded like a party favor. I actually made it all the way back to the park without a break. As I regained cognitive thought, I realized that I could probably speed things up a bit, but then realized that I had pulled so many muscles in my lower extremities that I was already maxing my hindered range of motion anyway, so I just continued. When I finally reached my car again, I instinctively reached out for a walker that I have not yet purchased. My feet hurt, my legs were sore, I had pulled both my groin muscles, I was seeing in white and a dull grey, my face felt like I had had a violent reaction to a bee sting, my tongue would no longer fit in my mouth, and my jaw was somehow popped out of joint. I tried to stretch a bit and then got back in my car. To add insult to injury, I looked in my rear view mirror and noticed that the wind had blown my hair into an 80’s do. Overall, I ran for 90 minutes, so I at least had to have run a couple of miles. Not bad for my first time in ages. I’ll have to give this special kind of torture another chance.