Before today, the last time I headed out for a run was precisely seven weeks ago. Even then, it seemed a fairly risky proposition. But as things here in NYC devolved in the days and weeks after, I was even less willing to push my luck. Ever since, all of my workouts have been entirely indoors – indeed, entirely in our apartment.

Until, that is, today. As the number of new cases has continued to drop, and as we collectively begin to puzzle through what a safe and gradual reopening might look like, heading out for a jog – albeit a masked one, and still steering clear of the more crowded running paths in Central or Riverside Parks – had started to seem like it wasn’t completely nuts.

So, this afternoon, I went for a short jaunt. Though I clocked just two miles, at a glacial 10-minute mile pace, I was still pretty beat up by the end. Despite hard indoor workouts in the intervening two-ish months, it seems there’s no substitute for actually hitting the pavement.

And though it was strange indeed to run while wearing a mask, and I had to follow a convoluted path to steer far clear of other pedestrians without getting flattened by oncoming cars, I was still glad to have done it. Going forward, I’ll be heading out again, at least a handful of times a week. It may take me a while to inch towards any semblance of my former 5k pace. But it seems I won’t be back in a real gym for at least another month or so, even in the most optimistic case, and I might as well put the intervening time to good use.