I recently decided I needed to get my backside in gear and get into shape again. I’m not sure what shape I could call myself right now: hexagon, trapezium, ellipse, sphere…

I feel like a rhombus. Not the shape, but the name has a certain flabby ring to it, don’t ya think?

And it just so happens that yesterday I received an email from EverythingMom.com with an article about 5 current fitness trends. I liked the look of one, the C25K plan (Couch to 5k) that promised to make a runner out of me.

I’m not a runner, let me make that perfectly clear. I know runners. They are my friends. But I don’t get the appeal. I admire my runner friends and have always envied their legs and glutes (when they don’t know I’m looking!), so I decided that I would follow the plan and try to make my glutes the envy of the neighborhood.

One site had a really handy place to download podcasts of music set to the timing of the plan. Unfortunately, as I set off to run this morning, I discovered that Week One didn’t download. Not to worry, I thought. Week 2 can’t possibly be that bad.

And since I’m a bit of a rhombus, I didn’t think it would be fair to subject people in my neighborhood to the sight of my jiggling, panting self on the first day. So I decided to run in my backyard.

We have a huge yard. Huge. And most of it is surrounded by honeysuckle vines that are at least 10 feet tall, so it’s like a big private park. Plenty of privacy. Only the dogs would be victimized by seeing me run, and they actually spent much of the time sleeping in a sunny corner. Lucky beasts.

I, however, ran.

Oh, did I mention that we also live on a hill and that our entire yard is sloped? So half the time I was running down hill (yea!) but the other half I was running up hill. Something tells me that hill-running isn’t necessarily in the C25K Week 1 or Week 2 plan.

The first couple of laps were not so bad. “I can do this,” I thought to myself. Then I hit the uphill portion of lap three. Suddenly I was afraid I was supposed to walk for a few minutes before running. I really didn’t remember if the planned intervals of walking and running started with walking OR running. Hmmm, as tired as I was, I was pretty sure I should have been walking to start things off nice and slow.

So I changed to walking. Just up the hill, of course.

But then the music changed and it was rather upbeat, too. I was really confused, because it didn’t sound more geared towards walking. Or running. Or anything other than exhuberent grave-digging because that’s what I felt like I was doing. So instead I kept going, walking and running as my labored breathing dictated. And since I felt like I was cheating the system (yes, one Day 1!), when I reached the top of the hill each lap, I threw in some pushups, tricep dips or lunges. OMG…now I hurt all over instead of just in my lower half. What what I thinking?!

I admit I didn’t run/walk the entire time I was supposed to. In fact, the podcast just finished as I was typing this. But I tried! And I think I need to go back and download Week 1 before I try again tomorrow. And I need to read the instructions again to figure out if I should start each session walking or running.

Tomorrow, I will start again. But on a flat surface of instead of the backyard.

Sorry, neighbors. I’ve warned you. Just turn and look away.