I still hate running. Seriously. I get no joy out of it. Zero.

One might wonder what sort of crazy person does something she hates five days a week. Something that makes her sore afterwards. Something that makes her out of breath and miserable while she’s doing it.

Yeah, when I figure that out I’ll let you know.

I’m training for a 10K – that’s about 6.2 miles, which is about 6 miles too far in my book. To date the furthest I’ve ever run is five miles. And that was so hard. Like really, really, really hard. And I had to walk some of it. (I always have to walk some of it.)

I’m training with the run club at my gym. We meet on Sundays for a long run and then we have running homework every week. I think I’d rather do Chandler’s Math Analysis homework. And I really suck at math. (Except for percentages and how they relate to things that are on sale. I’ll tell you, I can calculate the sale price of something in my head with the snap of a finger, no calculator needed.)

At the start of the training for the 10K our coach told us that we had  to do our homework. “Don’t come to these long Sunday runs without doing your homework,” he warned us. “Because if you do, one of three things are guaranteed to happen. One, you will get hurt. Two, you will die. Or three, you will not finish your race.”

Honestly any of those scenarios sound preferable to me having to run six point two miles.

Last week I was pretty excited because I had it in my head that we had an easy week and our homework was Monday off, Tuesday 2 miles, Wednesday 1 mile, Thursday 2 miles, Friday off, and Saturday one mile. My friend Carol corrected me and told me that is was Tuesday 2 miles, Wednesday 2 miles, Thursday 3 miles. We checked. She was right. Stupid Carol!

I’ve been running for over four months now, but I’m not getting any better at it. Well, it is getting a tiny bit easier, but I’m so slow. I’m always one of the last ones to finish.

On yesterday’s run we did a 4 mile trail run. My friend -who shall remain nameless, but she knows who she is!- asked me to run with her because she hadn’t run for a week because she’d been sick. Yeah, that’s how slow I am. I run with the infirmed.

Also, she got lost on a trail once and hurt her foot, so understandably she hates trails. This trail was pretty narrow in places with sharp drop-offs and very uneven terrain – very hard to do if you are not a trail-run fan. (Or if, like me, you’re not an any-run fan.)

My nameless friend had to walk a lot of it because of the unevenness of the terrain, so I, out of the goodness of my heart, walked a lot of it too. You know, because I’m a good friend like that. Not because I couldn’t run it. (Cough cough!)

I will admit that it is a beautiful trail (if you like dry California scrub) and at a little over halfway you end up at a waterfall.

And I suppose I should tell you that the main reason my friend wanted me to stay with her was because she was afraid of getting lost. So you know I got us lost right? And of course getting us lost resulted in us doing an extra mile. (I might or might not have said bad words to our running coach when he found us at the bottom of the trail where we’d taken a wrong turn and told us we’d have to go back.) I probably should have told her that I’m not just bad at math and running. I also have a terrible sense of direction.

Needless to say, we came in last for the people that were doing the four mile run. I’m pretty sure we still would have even if we hadn’t gone the extra mile.

So yes, as far as I’m concerned – running? It still totally sucks.