Running (?) Again - at my age?

I swore to myself that I would keep jogging until I turned sixty, even though I was suffering from chronic tendinitis , but after I took that "last" run, I stopped. That was four years ago. I'm coming up on my sixty-fifth birthday, and every time I see somebody jogging, I feel envious. So the other day, I decided I would start jogging again, very gradually and very slowly.

Having a vigorous young dog to walk is clearly another incentive. I used to jog with our two dogs in the Peace Forest, not far from our house. I'd let them off the leash, and we'd have a good time. But one of the two dogs is dead, and the other old one is so lame she can barely walk around the block. But our new, young dog needs a lot of exercise, and so does this aging human. After only 5 jogs, I can already feel the positive effect.

The first 3 times I only jogged for 6 minutes, but yesterday I got it up to 15 minutes, and today to 20 minutes. My muscles seem to remember what it was like to run, though they are still weak. But today, when I started my slow jog, I could feel my body asking for it, telling me, where have you been? I'm trying very hard to avoid injuring myself, to avoid overdoing it. When I jogged regularly, I never tried for speed. I took the advice of that great book, Running and Being, and tried for LSD: Long Slow Distances. The only one I'm competing with is me. If I manage to keep jogging for twenty minutes three or four times a week, that will be fine.

As for the dog, he sticks close to me but takes ten steps for every one of mine, zigzagging around, smelling things, dropping back, racing to catch up, running to the side, observing.