Running Nowhere

Disclaimer: I am not a runner. People always say that and add the "I mean, my marathon time is awful!" or "I only ran twelve miles yesterday!" I actually am not a good runner. The most I've ever run is two miles. But I started jogging in the fall and spring of last year because winter is so miserable that it makes staying inside and not exercising seem like a crime when the weather clears up. And so my short little running life has been quite pleasant. Until I got back to Georgia.

Several problems:
-Its 95 degrees outside.
-Lack of college friends who force me to run.
-Very tiring and time consuming summer job.

But I knew all of this going in. So, to compensate, I drank water, ate some protein a few hours before;

wore my lucky running top;

I should explain the top. My mom ran track in college, and this was her jersey. She gave me a bunch of her old tshirts to sleep in when I was about six. Most of them (including this one) fell apart, but I refused to throw this one away. Its really, really ratty and has been pieced back together many times:

but wearing it reminds me that even if I don't have a runner's stamina, experience, or endurance, at least I have a runner's genes.

So I put on my shoes, waited till the temperature dropped to the eighties, got my iPod set to good running music (Mumford today) and headed out. I hadn't even gotten halfway through my loop when my ribs started aching liked they'd cracked in half. Not just like a normal stitch in your side. Even walking jostled whatever it was. And so I walked the rest of the way, and then died at the top of the hill before my house:

Maybe I'll put exercise on hold until I'm back in a cooler climate.