No pain, no gain…unless it’s eighth grade P.E.

Are my legs supposed to hurt this much?

No, really. I have started walking like an 85-year-old woman with osteoporosis. I didn’t think it was possible to be this sore. OK, maybe that’s an exaggeration. I know it’s possible to be in a lot more pain, but I figured my lungs would go into shock long before my legs did.

Yesterday I think I ran the most I ever have in my adult life. (Let’s not mention that it was probably just over a mile and not even all at once.) The last time I even attempted to run anything close to a mile was in eighth grade when we had to do so for P.E. Of course, we had to finish in under 12 minutes to pass the class. So I did what any straight-A student would do… I cheated.

I admit it. I did not run the mile Mr. Eighth Grade P.E. Coach. I’ll probably get failed retroactively, but I don’t care. This is about me coming clean. Although I personally blame it on how our brand new middle school didn’t even have a track. We ran some random course from the front of the school, down into a neighborhood, up through the bus loop and back. We were not exactly visible to the teacher for the entire mile and I figured since I was already lagging behind quite a bit, I could shave a few seconds off by cutting across the bus loop rather than running along the outside.

And 12-year-old genius that I was, turns out I was right. I managed to get in under 11 minutes. A new record! I’ll just ignore the fact that I actually did not complete a mile. It was probably my time for nine tenths of a mile, but who’s counting? No one ever questioned it and I passed eighth grade P.E. But today, I would never think of short changing myself in such a way.

Unfortunately after my excursion into physical fitness yesterday, my body is retaliating. My legs feel like they are filled with lead, which is a slight improvement from yesterday when I was walking up the incline of the Vilano bridge and it felt like my legs were full of lead and that I was dragging a reluctant three year old to bed.

Then again, I am trying to get in better shape, so I can’t expect myself to feel remarkably fit afterward. And as they say, “No pain, no gain.”

What I want to know is, when does the pain end and the gain begin?