With all the inspirational stories recently cropping up and with running recently on my mind quite a bit, I thought I'd start a fitness related topic of my own.

So my sister, Lori Kingsley, recently narrowly failed to qualify for the Olympic Trials as a marathoner (a time of 2 hours, 47 minutes being necessary with her best official time being at 2:49) but despite that, I couldn’t be prouder. At age 42 now, she’s running sub 3 hours, is still capable of winning her divisional category in the more modest races and has placed as notable as second in the Philadelphia Marathon for her class recently. Couple that with a 9-year-old daughter who’s already won some pre-teen track and field races, I’d like to take a serious stab at picking up distance running myself. When Lori was last here, I did a little light run with her and found out that there’s a dramatic difference between doing 40 minutes of hard sweating on an elliptical machine at Gold’s and hitting the hard pavement over uneven, graded terrain. So while I bit my tongue and sucked it up, the truth of the matter is that by the time we got home, I had some lower back pain, joint discomfort, and serious muscle ache. 180 pounds never felt like so much before and what I thought was a good fitness level was woefully inadequate for that particular interest.

I am curious if anyone else (past 30 perhaps?) has tried to pick up running as a fitness pursuit without much prior training. What notable pitfalls did you encounter? What advice can you offer that might make it a smoother transition? I am not interested in competing as my sister does, but I would like to be reasonable competent so that I can run with her when she visits and (more importantly) be able to jog with my daughter as she gets older and continues her desire to emulate her aunt. I consider myself reasonably fit as an initiate: I play golf very regularly; hit the gym 6 days a week for 80 minute sessions; and ever since Pigpen here (a fellow Goodjer) came to visit with urgings to do some California trail hiking, I do similar fairly regularly as well. Again, though, my brief experience with true road work showed me that there’s a big difference between the smooth glide of machine cardo or the easy pace of scenic trail walking and the weight carrying impact of jogging steadily. Add to that the realization that fitness comes with greater effort now that I am into my 40s, I don't think it's going to be as easy as "work through the pain and keep at it hard" that I would have given it years ago.

Thus, if anyone out here as any first hand experience with running (especially after the “easy athletic years”) or anyone with personal fitness training, health/athletic sciences schooling, or otherwise knowledgeable in the subject, I’d love to hear any insight or guidance as to how to start to approach this.