I must have been around 13 or 14 that summer in Glen Spey when I apparently convinced Орест Галів that we should start running.  I managed to jog at most a tenth of a mile before I was out of breath and had slow to a walk, while Орест continued to run circles around me, and wound up doing about a mile and a half.  That was the only time I tried to run any distance in my life.

Until this year.  Exactly five months ago I began the ritual of the gym.  On my first outing I almost made it to 60 seconds on the treadmill before I was ready to pass out and my legs were throbbing.  Several months later, I've worked my way up to comfortably running for an hour at a stretch, albeit at what should conservatively be described as an octogenarian's pace.  I'm now normally displacing myself 5,2 miles in 60 minutes on the treadmill every two to three days.

Today was the first time since that day in the late 1970s that I decided to give "real" running a try — on the ground rather than on the treadmill.  I've been dreading this because of my conviction that running the dirt must be more difficult than the treadmill.  And because my pace would be embarrassingly feeble compared to the youngsters whose dust I'd be eating.

As it turns out, I was mistaken.  Clearly this rarely happens, but apparently I was due.  I'm fairly proud of myself.  Apparently the pace that works naturally for me is more around a 10:21 mile (about a half of a mph faster than my normal treadmill pace), and I ran 5.8 miles in 60 minutes.  Yeah, I ate some dust, but surprisingly I wasn't close to the slowest one out there.

Not bad for an octogenarian.  I'm still embarrassed, but mainly because I apparently did all this while wearing my reading glasses.

P.S. Kudos to Starbucks.  I timed the ending of my run so that I'd wind up approximately in front of the coffee house, but immediately realized that I had no cash. It turns out that you can pay for your latte and blueberry scone directly from the Android app on your cell phone, which made my day!