The way I see it, running is like the opposite of a relationship. When you start out with a new partner, you enter the honeymoon period filled with love and excitement and immediately get rose coloured glasses firmly planted over your eyes. It seems like everything is blissfully perfect, until somewhere along the path cracks start to show. With running on the other hand, there's no way around the fact that in many ways the start sucks. Not only is breathing scarily difficult, sweat more abundant, and heart rates sky high; but you get to become reacquainted with the pain of muscles microtearing and fixing themselves on a daily basis. For me, this has meant waking up being unable to walk without the pressure and pain in my calves forcing me into a robot shuffle for the first 5 minutes of the day. Navigating stairs has once again become a mission of sweet talking my quads and hamstrings into moving as they are designed to, and I am drop-dead tired most nights.