I am dreadfully out of shape. I have somehow convinced myself that all those hours spent in the gym and running on the track when I was younger would somehow carry over through college and beyond. But now that I have started training for a team marathon in October, I have discovered that perhaps that theory is slightly less than correct.

Tonight I went for a run that, against all odds, turned into a spectacular success. I started out my run around 8:30, realizing immediately that my dinner of french fries and a large cup of cookies&cream frozen custard was perhaps not the best pre-run meal. But I pushed through, and I was going strong. That is until I got about a mile in. This is the point where the neighborhoods meet the park, conveniently located for gaggles of bratty middle school kids to congregate. (You can tell they’re middle schoolers because they are far enough away from parents to be “cool” but not old enough to actually drive themselves any place worth going.) As I approached, there was an incessant amount of high pitched voices. I think the group consisted mostly of girls, though one really can’t truly tell by the sound of pre-pubescent voices… Anyways, lots of talking as I approached, complete silence as I ran past, and a chorus of laughter as soon as they left my peripheral vision.

I was stunned. Really. I mean, not that I was really ever cool to begin with, but I felt like I had then sunk to an even lower level than my own middle school days. (Then I realized about 10 seconds later that that wasn’t really conceivably possible and felt slightly mollified.) But they threw off my groove. I hate middle school kids. It wasn’t until I left the park that I remembered that I am a college graduate with high distinction who’s about to start a real job, while all they have to look forward to in their immediate futures is braces and zits. This was the turning point of the workout.

These thoughts carried me to about the halfway point, usually the point when I feel like I’m about to die and that some force of evil is trying to tear open my lungs with a hack saw. But today I was surprisingly okay. Because after I was done thinking about how awful it was going to be for those little snots to have to change for gym class, I realized that I could continue predicting their lives past the misery that is middle school.

For example, I started with the blond girl wearing the too-tight Hollister shirt and too-heavy eyeliner. My analysis began with a basic assumption of what I knew. Based on the neighborhood, I’m guessing that both parents work and don’t spend enough time with her, thus buying her love and affection by setting no limits and by taking her shopping for inappropriate clothing. From there, I extrapolated an appropriate ending. All through high school, said girl goes fake tanning and over-bleaches her hair, and likely is the type that always needs a boyfriend. She will not have the grades to get into college anywhere decent and will thus end up attending one of the small schools in South Dakota that sent her brochures in the mail. She’ll join a sorority and struggle through college, mostly because her drinking habits created a Freshman 30 that made male companionship a bit more difficult to come by and the education a bit more difficult to work for. She’ll graduate college and find a job at Old Navy, hoping against the odds that she can make it to the position of manager sometime within the next 10 years. At which point she’ll look back on her life and say, “I really wish that I wasn’t so dumb. It all started that day when I laughed at the runner in the park…”

Now, you can imagine that such extensive profiling leaves little time to worry about how much your lungs hurt. By the time I created futures for all of them, I was almost back home. I was shocked. My french-fry-and-ice-cream-run had turned into one of my most successful workouts and one of my lowest mile times. At that point, I decided to forgive the laughing kids. By the time I was home, I thought that maybe if I jogged back quickly enough, the kids might still be there and I could invite them to my race in October and see if they’re willing to help me insult my way to victory.

Some people will tell you that exercise creates endorphins. I wonder if chemicals that create positive moods are cancelled out by spending the whole work out sending mean wishes to the future of obscure 14 year olds?