SOUTHERN EXPOSURE: EXPERIENCING JOGGING BRINGS SURPRISE MILESTONES

I've taken up jogging again.

Jogging is such an appropriate term; it seems like every step I take something jogs a little one way then jogs back the other way.

I used to run a lot when I was in college and was fairly slim. Once college was over my days of running, and my days of being slim, were left behind.

I have a friend to thank for my return to the world of shin splints, blistered toes and periods of intense oxygen deprivation. This friend challenged me to run five miles the other day then humbled me by keeping up a running conversation (no pun intended) through the entire grueling 50 minutes, even though I had trouble thinking half way through.

But I made it. I ran -- no, jogged -- five miles. No one was more stunned than I when I heaved all 215 pounds of me over the final hill; panting, sweating, nauseous, cramping -- if that's what it's like to menstruate than I have an insight into a woman's physique that I could have lived my whole life without.

Once it was over I felt pretty good about myself. Since then, I've run a couple more times and my body is starting to respond.

My appetite is up. I'm sleeping better. I sigh a lot and when I do it feels like a great fog of unwanted tension wafts out of my body -- only to rush ahead of me to sit and wait at my desk at work.

Why is that? What is it about jogging that can have such a radical effect? For answers I went to Cape Girardeau physician and cross-country runner Dr. Walter Schraeder.

Schraeder is preparing himself for marathon racing and runs up to 16 miles in one day. He said despite the fact that he was not built to run he gets a lot of satisfaction from this simple act.

"I'm not so sure I've ever had a runner's high," he said referring to the alleged feeling of euphoria many people get from strenuous aerobic exercise. "For me it's more a release of tension."

Jogging 16 miles might be a release of tension for Schraeder, who I'm sure doesn't jog at all when he runs, but driving 16 miles can sometimes make me tense.

Schraeder said he took up running when he was in high school football and continued it when his years on the gridiron ended. He's never spent time studying the techniques of running and he jogs because it's simple.

"The body was meant to be exercised," he said, "but I don't necessarily have to recommend that people jog for aerobic exercise. They can swim, there's bicycles. Even walking up and down the steps at the Common Pleas Courthouse. Heck, you do that three or four times a week and you'll get fit fast."

Schraeder gave me one excellent piece of advice which I'm sorry to say I have broken.

"If something starts hurting, I mean an actual pain, then you should stop," he said.

Unfortunately, if I listened to that advice I wouldn't be enjoying the pleasure my feet get from pounding out five miles on concrete. Or the stiffening in my back the next morning, the tearing heat that replaces my lungs during a run or the cute way my calves will cramp unexpectedly when I'm stepping into the shower.

No way am I going to give up all that.

No, for now the rewards are softening the pain. It feels good to surprise myself in a positive way for a change. Running five miles -- three times in a row -- without dying, vomiting or passing out has certainly been a surprise.

~David Angier is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.