I used to jog when I used to commute to work by car, in order to get rid of my lack of exercise. I used to run about 2 km every morning, when the sun was rising or not.
At first, I was too lazy to run such a long distance, so I started with one span of a telegraph pole, then to the next traffic light, then to XX park, and so on, gradually increasing the distance.
Then one day, after about 2 kilometers, I thought I could go one more kilometer today, and I was able to run 3 kilometers, or even 5 kilometers, for that matter. Perhaps that was the running high I had heard so much about.
The next day, however, I was so sore all over that I couldn’t even walk properly.
This muscle pain was just too painful, and for some reason I was satisfied with the fact that I was able to run about 5 kilometers, and for some reason I suddenly lost interest in jogging. Perhaps it was the same feeling I had when I was so happy to ride a bicycle for the first time that I went out alone and got lost, and suddenly lost interest in bicycling.
Since then, no matter how much I felt I lacked exercise, I began to substitute walking or strolling, and rarely ran anymore.
The last time I ran was on a trip to New York about a month after I quit jogging.
On that day, I was in the front row of a group of black performers performing the human long jump, a performance you often see at tourist attractions, on the grassy lawn in Central Park. And I was on the far side of the platform. If I failed, I would be severely damaged.
I shook my head and turned my back to walk away, but one of the black performers suddenly made a show of chasing after me.
The black guy was the burliest of the performers, with a figure like Mike Tyson. I thought that my unintentional refusal had angered him, so I got scared and ran away. The other onlookers thought it was part of the performance and cheered wildly.
After running about 200 meters, I turned around and saw that the black man was still chasing me. He was looking very desperate, sliding his hands in a big gesture, as if he was really serious about catching a bad guy.
I panicked completely at this and, thinking to myself that I would be beaten if I was caught at this point, I started running again, running as fast as I could, which I thought was the fastest I had ever run in my life.
Soon, I heard a black man yelling something at me from right behind me. Of course, I had no idea what it meant. This only added to my panic.
After about a kilometer without being caught, I looked back and saw that the black man was still chasing me, but he had finally given up, or perhaps he was exhausted, and was now completely walking.
Finally, I was able to successfully escape. The black man looked very frustrated.
I felt a strange sense of triumph as well as relief, and I realized that this black man just wanted to catch up with me, regardless of my performance. I guess that black guy was just frustrated that he couldn’t catch up to the yellow guy who looked like he was a very good-looking guy and didn’t seem to be able to exercise.
If I had not been able to jog 2 kilometers just before the race, I am sure that the black man would have easily caught me and turned me into a human jumping box (thinking calmly, there is no way he would have beaten me even if he caught me).
This was the first moment I thought that jogging had a role to play. That said, I did not resume jogging after returning to Japan, perhaps because I thought that I should only run in such life-threatening situations.
I thought I would only do that about three times in my life. And I hope that the other two times will never come in the future.
See you soon.
