[mosta]

Thanks for the encouragement. I am close to 35. And I have size 14 feet, so recommendations for bigger feet have been helpful too.

I finally set and measured one route (which I'll change if I settle on the median or maybe laps in a park), and after a week and a half here's my performance today:
1 mile in 9:15. walk a quarter. .75 miles in 8:00. walk a quarter. .5 miles in 6:00. and then another almost half at the slowest pace again.

my goal would be to run 3 to 5 six minute miles by next summer--just to make something up. none of what I ran today felt extremely uncomfortable. I definitely appreciate the advice about getting into the experience. The thing with running for me was when I first tried to take up regular running (to make the soccer team (which I didn't)) in 8th grade and again in high school later, I got such debilitatingly sharp pains under the left edge of my ribs (I assume that's lactic acid) that I couldn't bear to keep it up. Now I don't have that problem at all, and I am able to enjoy it--when pushing early, when grinding it out at the end.