我非常讨厌跑步,直到50岁我改变了这一点

On Feb. 1, 2018, I put on a pair of sneakers and went for a run for the first time in more than 30 years.

2018年2月1日，我穿上运动鞋开始跑步，这是我30多年来的第一次跑步经历。

To say I was never a runner is a mild way to sum up a life of active antipathy to the activity. Exercise was never my thing - undertaken periodically, at best, in an effort to force my body to become a smaller size.

我从来不跑步是我这一生反感活动的温和说辞。我从来都不是锻炼爱好者--充其量不过是定期锻炼，以使身材更为苗条。

Yet here I was in my 50s, feeling heavy and out of shape, in a pair of sneakers I bought when I took tennis lessons in 1999 and an oversized neon pink sweatshirt, gasping my way again along the pavement.

但现在我50多岁了，感觉自己很笨重、身材走样，所以穿上了1999年上网球课时买的那双运动鞋，套上宽大的霓虹粉运动衫，再次气喘吁吁地在人行道上跑了起来。

I blame technology. It was my computer that got me to run again - and not just because sitting at it for years without exercising had gotten me into bad shape. On social media, I vicariously followed other people's fitness successes: an overweight mom who became a marathon runner, a friend who walked and ran off half her body weight, a music critic colleague who tweeted her day's playlist after each run.

我将其归咎于技术。电脑让我再次跑了起来--而不仅是因为多年来久坐不动使我身材走样。在社交媒体上，我间接关注了他人的健身成功历程：一位成为马拉松运动员的超重母亲，一位走着跑着减掉了一半体重的朋友，一位每次跑完步就会分享音乐单的音乐评论家同事。

Online, I kept seeing articles about the benefits of exercise; if it were an over-the-counter drug, one doctor said, everyone would buy it. And then there was an app: Couch25K (that's "couch to 5K"), a program that led you from Square 1 to running five kilometers in just eight wee. In my supposedly busy life, joining a gym had always seemed like an insurmountable hurdle. But I can always download an app.

在网上，我总是看到有关运动好处的文章；一位医生说，如果这是非处方药，每个人都会去买着吃的。再之后，Couch25K应用出现（即"5公里跑"），帮助初学者在8周的时间内从零起点跑完5公里。在我本该忙碌的生活中，去健身房健身似乎是一个无法逾越的障碍，但下载应用的时间还是有的。

Then I met up with one of my oldest friends for breakfast. "I've started running," she said, and maybe that, coming from a lifelong habit of sisterly competition, is what pushed me over the edge and got me actually to start a couple of weeks later.

后来，早餐时我遇到了一位老朋友。"我开始跑步了，"她说道，也许是因为长久以来姐妹竞争的习惯，我也受到了影响，并于几周后开始跑了起来。

And the beauty of running is that it's solitary - nobody has to know how long you've been doing it. Winded? For all that passerby knows, you've already run five miles. Or so you tell yourself.

跑步的美妙之处在于它是孤独的--没人知道你跑了多久。气喘吁吁？所有的路人都知道，你已经跑了5公里啦。或者，你就是这么心理暗示自己的。