Thing #5: You Gain A Whole New Sense Of Pride

And it may hit you at the strangest times.
 
The first time you tell someone, “I’m a runner,” you’ll be surprised by it, as though the actual thought will occur to you as it comes out of your mouth for the first time. Especially if you've been telling people you're just a jogger for a while. Then maybe after a while, someone will ask you if you’ve run any races, and you’ll say “Yes, actually, I ran a couple 5k’s this spring; I trained for the second one to get my time under 30 minutes, which I did.”
 
Maybe it will set in when you hit the first half-mile point of a run that an hour ago, you never thought you’d run, because your day was long and horrible and you were tired and achy and miserable. But at some point you decided, maybe since nothing else is making you feel better, you’d go work out. And suddenly you’re a half a mile deep in a 3-mile run, your mood already improved, your muscles thriving, and you know even if no one else does that you had the will to overcome your bad day and make yourself get out there.

Or maybe it will hit you when your baby brother goes running with you, and after four miles, he says, "I feel okay; do you feel okay?"
"Yeah."
"Want to run out another mile and back?"
And suddenly you've run a new record of six miles.

And then two weeks later you'll set out to break your own record, alone, and you'll run seven.
 
But those are the more typical times you’ll be proud of yourself.
 
You might get done with a long run and notice that the veins in the back of your hands are raised and swollen, and you think, “Wow, I look like someone who works out all the time.” You know, because you actually do work out all the time. Or ladies, you may be in the shower shaving your legs when you realize that you have to be a little more careful as you cross that new vertical ledge where your shin bone meets your suddenly-defined calf muscle. Or you may catch your profile reflecting in a mirror and wonder how your ass got so high. (That goes for ladies and gentlemen.)
 
Or maybe it will be as simple as realizing that your normal pants are now your fat pants, and your fat pants are now obsolete. What better reason than that do you need to start exercising?