I'm not a runner. No. Really.

Begin.

Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left.

My feet hit the asphalt in a sort-of rhythm, I swerve into the street to avoid a sprinkler here, another one there.

Right. Left.

My breathing is getting heavier, and I can feel my heartbeat increasing. I try to focus on the music in my headphones, try to find a rhythm that I can thwap-thwap my feet to.

Right. Left.

Round a corner. This is always the part in the first lap when I wonder what I'm doing. "First is the worst," I tell myself. "First. Worst. First. Worst." It's a nice rhythm.

Wait. First what? Lap? Mile? Hour? Crap. Depends on the night. The first lap, definitely, is the worst of all the laps I run. Except for the last half of whatever turns out to be my last lap. Because it's that last lap that makes me decide to take it down to a walk for the rest of the hour. Whatever. New song. Need to find a new rhythm.

Right. Left.

I've rounded another corner and lurched my way halfway through another leg of the four that make up a lap in this park. It's at this point, at a little jog in the path, usually when I'm trying to gauge where the next sprinkler is, that it occurs to me:

I am not a runner.

Like, at all. Not even close.

I'm nearing the corner that signals the last leg of the first lap. Since the first is the worst (I've settled on the "first lap" theory, because I have to psych myself up somehow, and that's all I've got), I convince myself that the worst will soon be over, and I can just settle into a rhythm for the next who knows how long.

But back to me not being a runner.

I'm a couch potato. A die-hard couch potato. I love everything about being a bump on a log, except the shape that goes with being a bump. I'm a couch potato who wants to be disguised as a fit, healthy person.

The only way that costume fits is to haul my arse out to the park for an hour a night, come hell, high water, sprinklers, foxes, racoons (no kidding) and various varieties of humans, sometimes in various stages of intoxication.

I'm not a runner. But I run anyway. The secret (for me) is to not break into an outright run. It could be called jogging by a very imaginative person. It's not fast. It's not pretty. It'll never get me into a marathon (thank God), and I'll never win races with it. But it keeps me moving. Keeps me in the clothes I have. Keeps me very, very aware of my lungs.

And last night was the best since last fall. Probably since last summer, since before I went to Canada. Four and a half miles — six laps — of right-left-right-left sprinkler-swerving goodness. My knees and feet are in agony today. And I feel amazing.

But I'm not a runner. And I never will be. A runner would tackle those laps much faster and with much more grace.

But for a couch potato, I'm doing pretty good.