I have never really considered myself a runner.

I have run because I had to. I have worked out because I knew I should. And like a lot of people, I have gone through stretches where I was motivated, made some progress, got busy, fell off, and eventually started over again.

This time feels different.

I am in my 30s now. I have a wife, kids, and an Air Force career that has already taken up more than a decade of my adult life. Between work, family, moving around the world, and everything else that comes with normal life, it is pretty easy to put your own health somewhere further down the list.

At some point, I decided I wanted to change that.

Not with some huge transformation goal. I am not training for a marathon. I did not wake up one morning and decide I wanted to become an elite athlete. I just wanted to get in better shape, improve my endurance, feel better, and become more consistent.

So I started with something simple.

Jog a little. Walk a little. Repeat.

That eventually turned into a five-week program.

At first, the goal was really just to finish the workouts. But somewhere along the way, I started paying attention to more than whether I completed the run.

I started looking at my heart rate. My pace. How long I could run before needing to walk. How I slept the night before. How my legs felt the next day. What I was eating. How much water I was drinking. How quickly I recovered.

I started paying attention to how I felt mentally, too.

Running gave me time where my brain was not bouncing between work, responsibilities, schedules, and whatever else needed my attention. For a little while, there was just the next step.

That became one of the parts I started looking forward to the most.

There is another reason I am taking this more seriously now. I may have shoulder surgery ahead of me, and that has changed the way I think about preparing my body. I cannot control everything that happens with surgery or recovery, but I can control what I do beforehand.

I want to go into it with a better aerobic base, better habits, better nutrition, and a body that is as prepared as I can reasonably make it.

So I started asking more questions.

What should my heart rate actually look like on an easy run?

Am I recovering enough?

How much protein do I need?

Does sleep make as much of a difference as everyone says?

What happens if I stop running for a couple of weeks?

That last question is one I am testing right now.

I am writing this from Japan.

I finished my first five-week program shortly before this trip, and I decided that I would not do any structured running while I was here. I will start again when I get home.

That does not mean I have been sitting still.

One day in Tokyo I logged 19,122 steps, 9.6 miles, and 24 floors. Other days have been much quieter. I have eaten sushi, ramen, gyoza, curry, yakiniku, convenience-store sandwiches, gelato, and probably more food than I could accurately remember if I tried.

And that is part of this too.

I do not want fitness to become something that only works when everything else in life is perfect.

I want to be able to travel. I want to eat good food with my family. I want to have days where I barely move and days where I accidentally walk ten miles exploring a city. Then I want to come home and continue moving forward.

That is really what The Middle Miles is about.

Starting something is exciting. Finishing something feels great.

The middle is harder.

The middle is where the excitement wears off. It is where progress can be difficult to see. It is where life interrupts the plan, motivation comes and goes, and you have to figure out whether you are going to keep moving anyway.

I am somewhere in that middle now.

Over the next five posts, I am going back through the five-week jog and walk program that got me here. One post for each week.

I want to show what the workouts actually looked like, how my numbers changed, what I was noticing physically and mentally, where I struggled, and what I learned as the weeks went on.

I also do not want to rewrite the experience based on what I know now. I want to look back at each week for what it actually was at the time.

Week 1 was the starting point.

Week 5 ended very differently than I expected.

After those five posts, we will be caught up to where I am now, and The Middle Miles will move forward with me in real time.

Maybe I get faster. Maybe I start running farther. Maybe surgery puts everything on pause for a while. Maybe some of the things I am convinced will work turn out not to work at all.

I do not know yet.

That is kind of the point.

This is the beginning of the blog.

It is not the beginning of the journey.

I am already somewhere in the middle.

Not at the Start. Nowhere Near Finished.