Once in a while I get those crazy ideas. Like wondering what I’d do if I won the lottery or conquering the world or, as I did yesterday, that it would be a good idea if I started the great sport of running. Running, that thing you only need your feet for (or, if you want to do it properly, running shoes for the price of a small car).
Now, yesterday it really sounded like a good idea. I’m presently employed at this factory, doing translation work on the computer, eating like a madman so I won’t go mad, in the process of which I’m steadily gaining pound after pound of well-deserved flab.
Thus, I decided to get up at 5:15 (instead of 6:15), thinking that about 45 minutes of running were a fair start for a running novice. Now, to fully understand the crazyness of all that, you need to know that I haven’t done anything even slightly resembling sports for the last six years. I smoke between 1 1/2 and 2 packs of cigarettes a day, and my diet is about as healthy as jumping into a pool of boiling lava.
Nevertheless, I was determined to be Mr.Universe by the time university would start in October, so I dug around in my old clothes and found pants which seemed good enough for my enterprise (they’re in fact old shabby pants my brother once wore, but hey, 5:15…who would be there to witness my degradation?). When I went to bed, I had my clothes set up right next to my bed, ready to jump in once my alarm clock would ring. Well, at 5:15 it rang, I jumped into my clothes, brushed my teeth and off I went into my new-found life of sportive entertainment.
It lasted until 5:40, when I noticed that I wasn’t able to breathe in anymore. I stopped, checked if that thing thumping inside by chest was actually trying to get out, and then decided to turn around and slowly, slowly crawl back home and into bed.
Tonight, almost 24 hours after this evil idea of moving my body for a purpose other than getting coffee or cigarettes had entered my head, I am still wondering where the hell it came from. As I was walking back home from wherever I had run to in those ten minutes, holding back that thing trying to jump out of my chest (and some vomit trying to jump out of my mouth….alright, that was a lie. I did not have the urge to vomit. I did have the urge though to rip out my lungs, scrape off the tar, hose it off and put it back in. But no vomit, I swear), I realized that, hell, I’d just have to stop eating that much during work. It’s that easy, but it took me the most painful ten minutes of my life to figure that out.