Then I went to City Sports and put down $130 on gear. Just running shorts, shoes (last year’s models are perfectly decent and are always half price – one of those peculiar rules of the universe cooked up by retail group think, uncertainty, and the usual customer segmentation) and one of those fancy fabric shirts (whose marketers are universally in love with the word wick).

And you know what? The gear makes a difference, especially when starting out. Far less chafing and joint pain, far more of that (still painful but in a good way) muscle burn. I was able to run farther (further? Ah! I forget the rule.) with less motivation. Even if that’s the result of some sort of confirmation bias at having spent so much money, it still turned into a good deal. Somewhere around my second year in college, fitness started becoming something of an issue for me. Hopefully, after several years of trying to reverse the trend, I’ll be able to get back on track.