NTKOG Who hires a life coach for cheap

NTKOG #245: The kind of fancy prancer who is so insecure in her own rudimentary fitness struggles that she hires her own cheering section.

I am: pretty embarrassed by what an awful jogger I am — despite the fact I seem to write about it every fifteen seconds.

I am not: super thrilled about random pedestrians seeing me, let alone paying someone to enjoy the show.

The Scene: Nine in the morning one sparkling Saturday, getting set to lace ‘em and (very, very slowly) race ‘em. But for the first time in Boston, I wouldn’t be making the trek alone.

This is the second of my three TaskRabbit-related NTKOGs, and one of the weirder. For context, this occurred at the end of Week 4 of my Couch-to-5k program, when the jog-to-walk quotient of my interval training nearly doubled and, as a result, I began to feel like a gasping, panting failure.

So I advertised on TaskRabbit for a jogging buddy to accompany my very slow progress, shouting encouragement and distracting me from the lactic acid blooms in my calves. But surely no one would actually — oh, four bids? Within fifteen minutes? Well dude, let’s get ‘er done.

The winning bidder was a charming young man named Octavius (his pseudonym, not mine; he totally looks like an Octavius, though). I warned him three or four times via email that this would be the least athletic jog of his life, but he didn’t seem worried.

When I met him outside my building at 9:10am, I was the one who was worried. Dude was built. One of those guys I wouldn’t even bother sighing over at the bar. After I introduced myself (“Like I said, I’m really slow.” “That’s cool. I haven’t run since I was 14. And, uh, I think I was running from someone.”), I asked him whether this was the weirdest thing he’d had to do.

I was heartened when he only paused for a moment before answering, “No, not at all!” Then thought for a solid five seconds. “Oh, for TaskRabbit? Yeah, definitely.”

Just to be me, I made it a little weirder. Although the ad only required my jogging partner be encouraging, could he do me a small personal favor? When I run, I like to ask myself trivia questions to distract myself from physical discomfort. Would he mind, uh, quizzing me on various intellectual themes while we made our slow way through Brighton and Brookline?

Octavius absolutely glowed during the task. Name the last six vice presidents! (Um, Millard Fillmore?) Shout out six current world leaders! (Gossip Girl just made a Sarkhozy joke — is he still around?) Which generals are involved in the war on Iraq?

Maybe it was the lack of oxygen to my brain, or maybe I’m just a total chimp, but I began to fear he was a correspondent for the Daily Show, filming some sort of vicious parody segment. Out Of Shape And Uninformed: THIS IS AMERICA!

Octavius: Okay, tell me who was on the sides of the War of 1812!
TKOG, panting: Go dumber!
Octavius: Uh, name all the cast members of Jersey Shore?
TKOG: Too dumb! Too dumb!

After about a mile, we fell into an easy rhythm answering questions about Hemingway’s ’20s ex-pat gang. This stood me in good stead until I reached the last five minutes of my run: the dreaded gentle uphill curve that had flung me into panting disarray for the past week. Dude, I told Octavius, I’m done talking — distract me! Tell me about the worst time you ever got rejected for a kiss! Imitate a humpbacked whale!

All of which — to his credit — he absolutely did. So either $9 is worth a lot more than I thought in today’s economy, or the fates sent me the platonic ideal of an amazing jogging buddy. Either way, made it through the stupid workout for the first time ever, knocked him an exploding fist bump, and we parted ways forever: he, stocked with a few more minutes of amusing cocktail party banter; I, a very slightly stronger woman. And, uh, a sweatier one.

The Verdict: Oh — oh god, did I just pay someone to pretend to be my friend? And did it just totally work?! Turns out $9 was an amazing price to pay for half an hour with a nurturing, Hem-loving jogging buddy. Plus, unlike the others times I’ve gone jogging with actual human beings, I was able to be direct with my needs (and deeply petulant whims) because dude was in my employ.

And apparently seeking a little affirmation did the trick on busting me through my wall: basically all of my workouts in the two weeks since this happened have been sheer magic. Last weekend, I ran four miles roundtrip over the Williamsburg Bridge and didn’t even force anyone to imitate a single whale call. Progress.

Thanks to TaskRabbit for giving me a $25 gift certificate to try out their awesome service. I suspect they might not have been as eager to ply me with gift certificates if they’d known how I planned on using it…

Tagged as: c25k, couch to 5k, embarrassing, FOUR FRIGGIN' MILES. that's fucking magical. seriously you might as well have asked me to run to atlantis and back, god am i an awful running, jogging, review but not a schmaltzy review because i swear i'm not an evil for-money blogger, TaskRabbit, wish i went to more cocktail parties here so i had an opportunity for persiflage, yeah i really don't follow world events -- if you wanna fight about it go ahead and send me a list of 25 living working literary novelists and THEN we can talk