For quite some time now, She has been prodding me to keep fit. Specifically, she’s been encouraging me to start running, since it seems to work for her.

With the nagging fresh in mind, I picked up a new iPod Nano and a Nike+ running kit whilst in Texas. Cabel Sasser’s fantastically written piece about the magic of Nike+ as a motivator and as a ‘game’ is already on the net; all I have to add to that it’s true.

In reality, Apple and Nike have invented a system that perfectly connects two sides of my brain that had previously only given each other occasional awkward glances across the fleshy halls of my skull: the nerdy, video gaming part of me, and the part of me that actually kind-of likes (and feels good about) exercise.

I wouldn’t keep doing it for the fact that I can see one little distance graph extend towards a very modest first goal (15 miles in a month) and another as I try and keep pace with Hanni in our head-to-head distance challenge.

Each morning when I switch on the laptop I see that she’s been running and pushed back into the lead and it really does motivate to go out for 15 minutes just to catch up. Which is one of the importantly notable things about starting out running: It doesn’t take very long not to go very far. 30 minutes a day (including shower) is hardly going to be missed. Once I’ve done this enough to become a glorious specimen of Man (a week or two?) then scheduling might get a little tougher as I have to run further. But right now I’m crap, so it doesn’t take very long.

I’m not running far, nor fast, just slowly building up my body to this idea of keeping fit; something it’s not really done for a number of years. So far it’s not resisting too much, bar an ache in my calves when I walk down stairs. It can only get better.