It happened when I turned 30 years old, seemingly on the very day my twenties were left behind. My metabolism, once my staunchest ally, turned suddenly and cruelly against me. All my previous life I had been able to eat anything I wanted and in as large of quantities as I wanted without any measurable effect on my weight or health. I could drink beer every weekend, spend every spare moment of my life luxuriating on the couch, never do anything more strenuous than walking from the airport parking lot to the control tower where I worked, and my waistline remained a steady and predictable 34 inches. And then suddenly and without warning, my pants started getting tighter and tighter on me. At first I thought my wife was washing them incorrectly, causing shrinkage, but eventually I was forced to admit the truth. I was gaining weight. After nearly twelve years of hovering within 5 pounds of 180, I was creeping up towards 190 and then finally towards the dreaded 200.

In addition to the tight pants, the ever-increasing scale readings, and the beginnings of a beer belly, my blood pressure started to creep up on me as well. Once confined to the nice safe ground of 130/80 or so, readings of 160/90 began to appear at my regular check-ups. My doctor told me it wasn’t high enough that medication needed to be prescribed, but it had to come down. The secret to getting it down, I was told, was to reverse what was making it go up in the first place: my weight.

Dieting didn’t seem to help; it would merely slow down the advance a little. And in all honesty, I wasn’t all that great at dieting anyway. I loved my carbohydrates and my fats too much. Pizza and beer and greasy tacos were my best friends. I was told however that there was a way to defeat the weight gain, to reduce my girth back to normal and to still enjoy the food that I loved. In addition, this miracle method would also reduce my blood pressure in and of itself, and possibly even add years to my life. This simple solution was exercise.

“Exercise?” I asked. “You mean like lifting some weights or something like that?”

Hardly. The easy solution was not quite that easy. What I needed, I was told, was some moderate aerobic exercise at least four times a week. I needed to get my heart rate up to around 160 and maintain it that way for thirty minutes. If I could do that, I was assured, my weight would drop off like magic in a matter of weeks and my blood pressure would return to normal.

Now there were several suggestions on how I could go about obtaining this much needed exertion. An aerobic exercise class was the most common suggestion. But I could hardly see myself donning spandex so I could stretch and dance with a bunch of overweight women. I could get a treadmill or a stationary bike and get my heart pumping that way. But such things were expensive and with a recent re-finance and second mortgage of the house my wife and I lived in, money was a little too tight for that. There was one suggestion however that was appealing in its simplicity. I could jog. Running would provide the boost and maintenance of my heat rate while not costing me any more than price of a new pair of shoes and a pair of sweats.

The only problem with this method of exercise was its availability. I worked Monday through Friday, 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM as an air traffic controller at Heritage County Airport. During the summer months, which was when I started this running regime, the afternoon heat and air quality in the late afternoon hours is unbearable. Temperatures of 105 degrees are not at all uncommon. At the very best, you’re talking mid-90’s. Not being a big fan of heat stroke I elected not to utilize this particular time slot for my routine. Nor were the evening hours that much better. Though cooler, the nights are still quite muggy and the air is still quite bad. Plus my motivation was not really there for this particular period of the day. After dinner all I wanted to do was relax, not drag myself out into the night and run up and down the suburban streets.

So that left the early morning hours before work. A natural early riser, this was actually somewhat appealing to me. I could get up at 5:30 AM, do my business out on the streets while it was still the coolest part of the day, and still have time to shower and eat breakfast before leaving for work. My wife and my kids were not even awake at this time of the morning so I would not even be missing out on any time spent with them. Thus, with such logic, it was decided. Dawn would be my scheduled jogging period.

The first day of this regime was in early June. I stepped out of the house at 5:45 AM dressed in a pair of black running shorts and a white t-shirt. My new running shoes were tied tightly to my feet, ready to carry me on this first journey to better health. In my hand I carried a bottle of water to help keep me hydrated.

The sun had yet to make its appearance above the horizon but its light was starting to touch the sky, imparting a vague pink glow off to the east and just enough light to allow me to see. I went through a series of stretches I had read about on the Internet, limbering up my calves, my thighs, my groin, my hamstrings. All of these muscles protested this by sending burning pains up and down whatever limb they were attached to. Finally, when I was as limber as I thought I could make myself, I took a few deep breaths and set off on my run.

In my car the previous day I had used the odometer to measure off the distance to various landmarks. Out to the end of my street and then down Willow Creek Road - the main route of travel through our section of the suburb - to Carmichael Drive was exactly one half mile. The intersection of Willow Creek Road and Cypress Avenue was exactly one mile. My plan on that first day was to start slow and only put in two miles. I would run down to Cypress and Willow Creek and then turn around and come back. This, I figured, would take me about twenty minutes or so, including the cool down period. Sure, I knew I was supposed to put in a full thirty minutes but I’d have to give my body a little time to adjust wouldn’t I?

Well, as it turned out, my estimations of my initial stamina were a bit of an overestimation. I started out at a pretty good pace, my legs pumping up and down, my feet pounding on the pavement of the bike lane, but I was only able to maintain it for about five minutes before a sharp pain started in my side and my breath was tearing in and out of my lungs like fire. Sweat was pouring down my face and my heart was pounding alarmingly fast, at close to 190 beats per minute. Before making it even a half mile, I was forced to a slow walk to keep from keeling over with an exertion produced coronary. I ended up walking more than three quarters of the two-mile route that day and it ended up taking me well over the thirty minutes I’d allotted.

The next day the muscles of my legs, groin, and feet ached so badly when I got up I didn’t even bother trying the run. I was hurting in places I hadn’t even known I’d had. It took a twenty-minute shower under scalding water and a double dose of over the counter anti-inflammatory pills before I could even loosen up enough to drag myself to work.

The day after however, though still quite sore, I was determined to try again. I knew I needed to establish myself in the routine quickly and irretrievably or I would more than likely end up abandoning this quest before I had a chance to see any results. I set out once again from my driveway, running a little slower this time, vowing that I would finish the complete two miles even if it killed me.

Well, it didn’t kill me but neither did I finish the complete two miles either. I’d made it about eight minutes into the run that day, just a bit over the three-quarter mile mark, before the pain in my side and my pounding heart beat forced me to slow back to a walk again. Aching, drenched in perspiration, breathing in ragged gulps, I trodded forward to the end of the course I’d set off and then turned around and walked back. Twice I tried to run a little bit, just to say I had, and both times I made it less than a hundred yards before the exhaustion forced me back to the slower pace.

The next day, though my muscles were now screaming at me for the abuse I was inflicting upon them, I tried again. And once again I made it just over three-quarters of a mile - at an even slower pace than previously used - before I slumped back to a walk, hurting and out of breath. I was very frustrated with myself, with my body, with the physics that made this so difficult. That might very well have been my last attempt if Kimberly Bates had not come running up behind me at that particular instance.

Kimberly, or Kim as she liked to be called, was one of my neighbors. She and her husband lived just around the corner from us and until that day I knew her only in passing. Friendly waves when she drove by on her way somewhere and some idle chitchat at the annual Independence Day block party were the extent of our contact with each other. She was a tall blonde woman in her late twenties, fairly attractive in an innocent, woman-next-door sort of way. I knew her husband was some sort of accountant or something and she herself was employed in some capacity somewhere since she drove by the house at regular intervals. I did not know that she was into running or exercise, although, in retrospect, I suppose it should have been fairly obvious since her body had always had that toned look about it.

“Bob?” she said carefully as she slowed her pace to match mine. “What are you doing out here?” Her voice had neighborly concern in it. She was dressed in a pair of black spandex shorts and a black running bra. Despite my fatigue and misery I could not help but take in her shapely legs and the smooth expanse of her bare belly. A light sheen of perspiration was clinging to her skin, giving it a bit of a shine in the early morning light. Her moderate sized breasts moved softly up and down with her respiration.

“Hi,” I panted. “I was just out jogging.”

“I didn’t know you ran,” she said. “I thought I was the only one crazy enough to come out here this time of morning.”

“Well,” I said, “I’m kinda new to this. So far I’m not really doing all that well.”

“Is this as far as you made it?” she asked me. “This is not even a mile from your house.”

“I know,” I grunted, watching almost transfixed as a bead of sweat trickled down her neck and across the front of her chest to dribble into her cleavage. I tore my eyes away from this sight before she caught me gawking at it. “I uh ... like I said. I’m pretty new to this. Trying to get some exercise and lose a little weight you know.”

“Oh I know,” she said. “I plump up something awful if I don’t do my run at least three times a week. But you’ve got to run more than a mile if you want it to do any good.”

“I’m trying,” I told her. “Believe me, I’m trying.”

“How long have you been at it?” she wanted to know.

I took a drink from my water bottle, refreshing my parched mouth and then stole another quick look at her smooth belly. My god she was an attractive woman. Strange I’d never really noticed that before. She generally dressed in loose clothing. Maybe that was it. “Uh ... this is my third day,” I finally answered. “I hear it’ll start to get easier soon.”

“Well it will if you apply yourself a little better,” she said. “It sounds like you’re not pacing yourself real well. You have to start slowly. Just kind of trot along at first so that you can keep going for thirty minutes. I bet you’re coming out here and hauling ass and burning out in a few minutes, aren’t you?”

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly say that I was hauling ass,” I said. “But yes, I do seem to be burning out fairly quick. How far do you go? Uh ... on your run that is.”

I thought she might be offended at my unintended sexual innuendo. This was, after all, the era of out of control political correctness and sexual harassment lawsuits. Instead she just smiled a little. “On my runs,” she said, “I do three miles. Up to the corner of Willow Creek and Brannigan. In the other departments, you’ll just have to wait until you know me better to find that one out.”

I laughed, feeling a warm flush at her semi-flirtatious remark. It seemed wildly out of character for her, or at least it seemed wildly out of character for what my perception of her was, which was of a somewhat naïve, almost schoolgirlish persona.

“Anyway,” she told me, turning serious, “I can help you pace yourself up if you want. Do you come out here every morning?”

“I’m trying to work my way up to four times a week,” I said.

“I run Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday,” she said. “Go home, rest up until Friday and then meet me in front of your house at 5:30. I’ve been running for years. I’ll get you up to speed in no time.”

“Really?” I asked, pleased at the thought of having a mentor at this, especially one who was as attractive as she and would teach the lessons while wearing a sports bra and spandex shorts.

“It would be my pleasure,” she said. “It’ll be nice to have someone to run with out here. As much as I’ve tried to get him to, Rick will never join me. He says he hates getting up early if he doesn’t have to.”

I did as she suggested and turned myself around to go home. She gave me one last wave and then headed off in the other direction, quickly establishing what looked like a near run to me. Though I was a bit frightened at her pace, which was considerably faster than I’d been traveling while I’d been at burnout speed, the view of her tight butt and the backs of her smooth legs was well worth it.

As promised, she was there waiting for me when I emerged from my house at 5:30 AM on Friday. She was wearing fluorescent blue spandex this time, and a sports bra that matched. She had a smile on her face as she saw me standing there in my shorts and T-shirt, water bottle in hand.

“Ready for some serious running?” she asked.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I replied.

“Good,” she said. “Let’s get stretched out.”

The first lesson she taught me was how to stretch out. Apparently I’d been doing it all wrong, leaving out entire groups of muscles. She had me bend this way and that, lift my legs up and down, stretch back and forth in several different ways, all of them mildly painful. But the pain was offset by the fact that she performed the stretches with me, from a position directly in front of me. Watching her tight legs become even tighter, seeing her thighs spread wide apart as she limbered up her inner groin muscles, was as inspiring a sight as I ever hoped to see. I simply could not get over the fact that this was the same woman who walked around most of the time in ankle-length skirts, loose fitting blouses, and with her hair tied up in a tight bun.

After the stretch we started our run. She served as the pace setter for me and jogged along at a clip that was hardly better than a walk.

“Are you sure we’re going fast enough?” I asked her as we reached a quarter mile and my pulse was still hovering around the 100 mark.

“Trust me,” she said. “This is the proper pacing for a beginner. You’ll warm up slow but you’ll be able to make it the entire two miles this way. You’ll start to feel it soon.”

And of course she was right. By the time we reached the half-mile mark I had broken a nice sweat and my heart was pumping along at 130. I was feeling the exertion, but not so much that I had to stop. Instead of burning out in five minutes, I was chugging along and able to maintain the pace. We passed three quarters of a mile and then a mile and I was still going.

“How are you doing?” she asked me as we turned around and started heading back. I noticed that, unlike myself, she had hardly a glint of perspiration on her face and her tone of voice was still conversational instead of breathless.

“Good,” I panted. “I think we found my pace.” I took a moment to catch my breath and then said, “But you’re not getting very good exercise today. I’m making you go slower than you’re used to.”

“Don’t you worry about me,” she said. “We’ll go a little faster every day and then start to extend how far we go. You’ll be running three miles in twenty-four minutes with me in no time.”

I was forced to slow down a little towards the end of the run, but I did indeed make it the entire two miles. After we returned to the front of my house she insisted that we walk for another quarter mile so we could cool off and let our muscles gradually wind down. This walk took us past her house and back out to Willow Creek Road. We then turned around and came back.

“Good job,” she told me, her hand patting me companionably on the shoulder. “You worked up a good sweat today and you didn’t kill yourself in the process.”

“Thank you,” I told her. “I was about to give up yesterday. I’m glad you happened along when you did.”

“I’m glad I did too,” she said, offering me another of her smiles. “Like I said, it’s nice to have a companion. It’s so friggin boring doing it by myself.”

“Yes,” I said, before I could stop myself. “It’s really no fun doing it by yourself, is it?”

I blushed furiously as I realized what I’d just said to her. After all, she wasn’t one of my co-workers in the airport control tower where the talk, even between males and females, was notoriously risqué at times. She was a middle-class suburban wife whom I’d really only met two days before. I opened my mouth to apologize for my remark, but before I could, she opened hers first.

“It DOES work all the wrong muscles doing it that way,” she said with feigned sadness.

I looked at her with my mouth agape for a moment and then both of us burst out laughing.

“Oh my god,” she said. “I’d better go in now and wash my mouth out with soap. I’ll see you on Sunday morning?”

“Same time, same place,” I promised.

“That’s the spirit,” she told me. With that she turned and walked to her front door.

I took one last look at her gorgeous legs, at the tightness of her ass, and then walked home. The house was still dark, my wife and kids still asleep when I arrived there. I took a shower and went to work in a good mood that day.

Every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday after that, Kim and I met on my driveway at 5:30 AM. As the morning sun first brightened the sky and then poked up over the horizon to warm it, we would stretch out in my driveway and then run along Willow Creek Road at whatever pace I happened to have advanced to.

She proved a diligent taskmaster, goading me along so I would go a little bit faster each day, so I would go a little bit further. She gently chided me when I claimed I couldn’t keep up, compelling me to push my body much harder than I would have done had I been left to my own devices. Within two weeks I was running two miles in twenty minutes. Within three I was running three miles in 34 minutes. After six weeks with her I was able, as promised, to maintain an eight-minute mile right alongside of her and complete the full three mile circuit in just under 25 minutes. Not marathon running fitness perhaps, but more than enough for my purposes.

And as the weeks went by, as my pace and speed continued to climb, I saw very favorable results in my body. It was nothing terribly dramatic of course. The weight did not just fall off of me (in fact, I actually gained a few pounds at first as some of my fat was turned into muscle), but gradually the beer belly that I’d been starting to sprout disappeared, inch by inch. My waistline, which had gone up to just a hair over 36 inches, returned to the 34 inches I was accustomed to. My legs, which had always been kind of plain looking, not fat, not skinny, gradually began to bulge with runner’s muscle in the calves and the thighs. The soreness that had been my constant companion through the first few weeks of the regiment disappeared as well. The most telling consequence of the exercise however was in how I felt. My body just seemed more efficient. I no longer got winded if I had to walk up the steps to the control tower at work. I had more energy during the day and I slept like a rock at night. My blood pressure came down little by little until it stabilized at around the 120/70 range and my resting heart rate kicked along at about 64 beats a minute. And all this despite the fact that I still quaffed down pizza and beer whenever I could get my hands on it, despite the fact that I never turned down seconds at the dinner table, despite the fact that I ate every high cholesterol, high fat, and high carb meal that I could get my teeth around.

The most pleasant result of this period however was the fact that Kim and I became close friends. As we ran through the early morning hours next to each other, we would talk about our lives, our hopes, our dreams. Something between the two of us seemed to click and we found each other very companionable, gradually working our way up to the point where we were telling each other almost anything. She told me about her job as a part-time real estate agent for one of the local firms. It was a job that she really didn’t need as far as family income went, a job that her husband, a tax accountant for the county, was always nagging her to give up.

“I have to get out of that house a couple times a week though,” she told me. “I love Rick to death and all but I go stir crazy if I stay in there too long. I’m just not cut out to be a housewife I guess.”

I in turn told her about my job, which my wife, who was very status oriented, was always nagging me to give up.

“I have a bachelor’s degree in business,” I said, “but I’ve never used it. I started working ATC on a whim in my last year of college and I’ve never left it. It’s not a very glamorous job I’ll admit, but I like it a lot. I can’t see myself being a CPA now and working in some office building, or going to law school like my wife is always hounding me to do.”

“We should do what we like to do,” she’d agreed, taking a sip from her water bottle. “That’s always been my motto.”

“Yes,” I’d answered, watching her bouncing breasts beneath her sports bra, “that’s a very good motto.”

That of course earned a flirtatious laugh from her as she saw where my eyes were focused. By this point in our relationship we were well beyond the blushing stage at such innuendo.

In fact, by this point in our relationship, we were dangerously flirty with each other for two people who were married to others. Dangerously flirty, and there was an undeniable sexual attraction that should have warned us where the flirtations would eventually lead.

The attraction started with me of course. Day after day of running next to Kim while she was dressed in a variety of skimpy jogging outfits fixed her image in my mind as a desirable woman. I think the contrast between her normal manner of dress and the way she looked in the early morning hours was a big part of the stimulation. During the daytime hours she wore conservative business dresses or loose fitting slacks and billowy blouses. She was always clean and neat and proper looking when she presented her face to the awakened world.

But I saw her with her stomach bare, her legs on display, her spandex clinging to her shapely ass. I saw her with a fine sheen of perspiration covering her skin, her face flushed with exertion, her breasts molded to her bra and heaving with her respiration. I became obsessed with the sight of those legs pumping up and down, with those lovely ass cheeks flexing and releasing as she moved down the road. I loved the sight of those breasts bouncing in the sweaty sports bra with the rhythm of her stride. I loved the damp look of her blonde hair as we really hit our mark about two miles in. She looked fit and very healthy when I was with her, and my lust for her grew with each morning we were together.

Soon it was her image that I invoked on those rare occasions when my wife would consent to a little after hours sexual entertainment. It was her sweating, scantily clad body that I thought of on the more frequent occasions when I jerked off in the shower prior to getting ready for work.

The flirtations we shared were gentle ones at first, simple innuendo such as we exchanged during those beginning runs. We each discovered that the other had a rather raunchy sense of humor in regards to sexual puns and double meanings. But it wasn’t long before we were openly discussing various aspects of our sex lives. I think it was the discovery that both of us were somewhat frustrated in the marital relations aspect of our lives that was the catalyst for what was to come.

“Rick just isn’t into sex all that much,” she confided to me one morning. “Even when we were dating, we never really did it more than twice a week or so. Nowadays, if I can get it once a month I count myself lucky.”

“Wow,” I’d replied, shaking my head a little at that. “That’s pretty bad. Most men complain that they’re not getting enough. Like me for instance.”

“Oh?” she said, casting her teasing gaze upon me. “Carrie doesn’t give it up much either huh?”

“Two, maybe three times a month,” I admitted. “And it’s like pulling teeth every time. I don’t like to brag or anything, but I happened to think I’m pretty good in the bedroom...”

“Oh are you?” she asked, a twinkle in her eye.

“That’s my opinion,” I assured her. “I’m a very oral person, if you know what I mean.”

“Oooh,” she said. “That’s what we women call a good man.”

“I’m definitely a good man then. But Carrie doesn’t like it when I ... you know ... do that sort of thing to her. She’s kind of repressed about her vagina I think. Doesn’t like me to look at it, touch it, smell it, and especially not taste it. Not even after she’s just got out of the bathtub.”

“Her and Rick should’ve gotten married,” Kim told me. “He won’t put his mouth within two feet of my crotch. When he does decide he wants some he just climbs on top of me under the covers and goes to town. Five minutes later, he’s sound asleep.”

“You’re right,” I said. “He would be Carrie’s dream man.”

“Maybe we should trade off for a bit?” she asked. “I’ll come over to your house and boff you for a month and she can come over to my place.”

I laughed, feeling a semi-erection trying to spring to life at the very thought. “Sounds like a good idea to me,” I said.

“But somehow I don’t think our spouses would be too keen on it.”

“Nope,” I sadly agreed. “That’s always where it all falls apart.”

The weeks went on and our talks seemed to grow more risqué by the day. We expanded upon the various shortcomings of our respective spouses sexual technique. We related past sexual experiences from before marriage with different partners, each of us telling of the best we’d had, the worst we’d had, and the strangest place we’d had it. And then one day we found ourselves discussing our masturbation habits. I told of my practice of jerking off in the shower before work. She then told me she had ordered a seven inch vibrating dildo from an adult internet site and that she was partial to lying naked on her bed during the afternoon hours and frigging herself to a wet, sticky orgasm with it. It was during that particular discussion that our talk was moved onto a higher plain.

“Are you okay?” she asked me softly. “You have a funny look on your face. Did I embarrass you finally?”

“No,” I said, “it’s just that...”

“Just that what?”

“I was just imagining you lying on your bed, naked, with your dildo,” I told her. “Sorry, couldn’t help it.”

“And does that image disturb you?”

“No,” I said. “To tell you the truth, it’s actually quite arousing.”

“So is the thought of you doing it in the shower,” she confessed.

We ran on in silence for a moment, each of us pondering this new development. This was the first time, despite all of the innuendo and flirtation, that we had actually admitted a sexual attraction of any kind for each other. True, we had both known it was there, but we had never articulated it. It now seemed a slightly dangerous thing hanging between us.

“What do you think about?” she finally asked, breaking the silence.

“Think about?” I responded, although I had a pretty good idea of what she was talking about.

“While you’re in the shower?”

I hesitated, feeling on very shaky ground all of a sudden.

“Do you ever think about me?” she asked.

“Yes,” I told her. “Lately that’s all that I’ve been thinking about.”

She gave a nervous smile. “That turns me on to think that you’re imagining me while you do that,” she told me. “That turns me on a lot.”

“Really?”

“Really,” she confirmed. She hesitated for a second, her face looking wonderfully shy and innocent, as if she was debating whether to say something or not. And then she said, “And I have to tell you that when I’m playing with my little toy in my bed, it’s been you that I’ve been thinking about lately.”

Another silence descended. My stride was thrown off more than a little by the fact that my cock was filling with blood inside my shorts. Nor was I the only one with a hardening problem. I could plainly see the points of Kim’s nipples protruding from beneath her sports bra.

“It’s really a shame we’re both married,” she almost whispered. “If we weren’t, I think I’d have you back at my place about now.”