In the past 48 hours I managed to avoid 1) abject humiliation, 2) the devil's temptation known as Gaming, and 3) death.

We headed out to the country with our friends M & S on Saturday. As they possess a healthy consideration for a tragic tale, I regaled them with tales of how bitterly grueling my firefighting class is turning out to be. I confessed that despite my self-concept as a basically healthy and fit person, the sheer awfulness of the first day of class had made me fully aware that it is going to demand more of my body than anything I've ever done. And so I've taken the unprecedented measure of committing to an exercise regimen that includes jogging, an activity that I've always believed could hardly be more boring or unpleasant.

I made this admission with some trepidation, because M is a marathon runner. She'd polished off 8 miles that morning and wasn't, surprisingly, dead. "Are you going to go running tomorrow?" she asked. I reluctantly admitted that I would be. "You want to run together?" she asked. I didn't say anything for a moment. One week into my new workout regimen, I can already see significant improvement in my stamina, but going jogging with M sounded like going out to play a little one-on-one with Shaq. An interesting experience, but ultimately a hollow and agonizing reinforcement of one's own inadequacies.

M is nearly twenty years older than me, but she's in great shape and could deck me with one kung-fu kick to the groceries. I fully anticipated that the run would be far more painful to my ego than to my legs or lungs. After a while, I became curious about just how different our joggability would be. I knew that to approach the experience as a competition was to miss the underlying value of striving for personal achievement, but I also knew that that's exactly the kind of thing that losers say.

So the following morning we set out through the graveled foothills. One week ago, I had managed about a mile's run through similar steep terrain, but I did not mention this to M as we planned a 4-mile loop. In customary fashion, I was determined to prevent another person from perceiving any weakness on my part. Though doubtless grounded in pathological thinking and early childhood experience, it has frequently turned out to be a remarkably adaptive and useful strategy.

I had never run with another person before. Surprisingly, I found it helpful. The not-so-latent competitor in me was determined not to fall behind, which helped me maintain a solid pace, and M offered some useful hints on how to be a real runner. For example, she told me to replace virtually every item of clothing I currently wear to run. I kind of embody the traditional Chariots of Fire look, sporting none of the last few decades' advancements in lightweight clothing or specialized shoes.

New shoes! I thought. Few pleasures equal that of wearing brand-new shoes for the first few days, while they still have that inexplicable factory-installed extra bounce. Maybe this running thing isn't so bad after all.

M proved to be a very humane running partner, in no way determined to demonstrate her superior prowess by running me into the ground. I managed to survive 4 miles of hilly terrain without actually heaving a lung out of my body or begging to be carried, and so I was quite pleased with the effort.