Gang Aft Agley

Although I never wrote a year's end round-up post for 2011, I did allude on more than one occasion to the fact that I had set but one goal for myself for the year 2011 - viz., to run a total of 1200 miles because that would represent 100 more miles than I'd run in 2010 - and that I had met that goal. (No brag. Just fact¹.) Possibly the most natural thing to do, in this age of mindless escalation that we live in, was to set myself a 2012 goal of running 1300 miles. But I mindfully and deliberately did not do that. What good would upping the ante every year do²? Eventually, I'd either hurt myself trying to meet the goal or I would just fail to meet it ... or, most likely, both.

Which would be pretty pointless because we all know I'm gonna end up hurting myself in any case. A couple years ago it was tendinitis; then it was the dislocated shoulder; this year I've already gotten the injury out of the way (I hope) by falling on my face and knocking out a cap. I still have a temporary cap in my pie-hole and am still waiting for the call from my dentist telling me the new cap is ready.

So my "goal" for this year was the far more modest - modest to the point of hardly qualifying as a goal due to its vagueness - one of running fewer miles but trying to log more miles on my bike.

But here's the thing with that: After face-planting on the bike in the wee hours of the morn (I hit a speed bump that I knew was coming, but I misjudged exactly when and went @$$-over-teakettle at around 20 mph as a result and was lucky not to've killed, much less seriously injured, myself), I decided, no matter how nice the weather, I wouldn't bike in the dark. So morning biking will have to wait a few months, for that time of year when it starts to get light earlier.

But as anyone who lives on the East Coast can tell you, we have had virtually no Winter weather this Winter. It's been amazing. Even when I slipped on that ice and fell and knocked out my tooth, I think it was because I managed to find the only patch of ice in existence on the East Coast and it was only in existence until about 8 that morning, after which the early morning sun melted it back into a wet spot in a dark section of a parking lot. (Of course, I met it at 4:30 a.m., before that phase transition had occurred.)

So ... nice weather ... free early morning hours in which to run ... biking out of the equation ... all I have been doing is running.

And so naturally, I am ahead of where I was at this point in 2011 when I was affirmatively trying to log a lot of running miles. I had to average 100 miles per month to meet my 2011 goal, but in January of 2011, I managed a mere 90.56 miles, whereas in February, I managed 90.58. So goal-wise, I started off the year 2011 nearly 19 miles in the hole. Because there was an actual Winter last year and so there were days I simply couldn't run when I wanted to.

But this year, deliberately doing shorter runs, I have so far run 211.18 miles - 103.95 in January and 107.23 in February. (Today's run: 6.03 miles at a 9:18 pace. So that's six February Leap Day bonus miles, but they still count.) My runs this year have been shorter and slower, but because running is just about all I'm doing, the miles are adding up, anyway.

I'm pretty confident shitty weather of some type will come to my rescue. It'll probably rain incessantly (to make up for the mild Winter weather) come Spring and I'll never get out the door and I'll have to spend most of my days doing yoga indoors and Giving It To P*ssy-@$$ Morrissey - HARD!1! Because yeah, I don't deliberately run in the rain. I've been caught in the rain on runs, and, once fully soaked, thought: "Fuck it; might as well finish, because I won't be getting any more wet at this point"; but if it's raining hard when it's time to set out on a run, I don't do it.

Which in some people's eyes makes me a total pussy, but here's the thing with that: Fuck you, Some People, because I don't run to prove how macho I am or to improve my speed or to be a better competitor. (I've said on many occasion, I think, that to me, running is an exercise like, e.g., calisthenics, not a sport like, e.g., baseball.) I don't enjoy running most of the time. I run only to make myself healthier. That's it. If running didn't accomplish that, I simply wouldn't do it.

And it does accomplish that. In ways I didn't even really anticipate. I never ran as a kid; running is not an exercise I used to do in high school, drifted away from, and then re-embraced in my geezerly years of dotage. I started running because I had Fat Eyes (=High Cholesterol). Running helped me bring that under control, which is what I wanted it to do.

But it also gave me a really healthy heart, evidently. My resting heart rate is now at around 40, and it's gotten to the point that when I go to a doctor's appointment and the nurse takes my pulse, she invariably remarks on this³. "I run," I always say. "O," the nurse always replies: "I guess that explains it."

Healthy heart ... lower cholesterol ... neither of those things is particularly surprising, though. What is surprising is ... I never get sick anymore. I was almost afraid to write that because, y'know, as soon as you say it ... But the fact is, I used to get roughly two kick-ass illnesses per year, the kind where you're sick enough to call out at  work for maybe two days and you feel like shit for about five more? Yeah ... I don't get those anymore. I can't remember when the last time was that I felt really bad for more than a day; and the short illnesses I do get I attribute more to maybe lack of sleep or occasionally over-indulging in food and/or beer. But a long, lingering flu? I just don't seem to get that anymore.

And I can't think of any reason for that other than the addition of regular running to my routine.

So, to me, an hour or so a day of intense discomfort is well worth the payoff. It's that - the near eradication of long illnesses - that gets me out the door on those days when I really just don't feel like it.

So thanks for that, Stupid Running.

---

---

¹ For all you zygotes out there, "No brag. Just fact" was the catch-phrase uttered by Walter Brennan in a TV western from my youth, a show called The Guns of Will Sonnet. Will (played by Brennan) and his grandson Jeff (Dack Rambo (nom de pr0n: Dick Rimbo)) were searching for their (in Will's case) son and (in Jeff's case) father, and when Will would meet a stranger he'd invariably inform him that his missing son was an expert with firearms but that his grandson (here he'd motion toward Jeff) was better. Then he's add: "And I'm better than both of 'em -- no brag, just fact."

Then he'd whip out his 15-inch dick and say, "O also ... I have this."

² And to anyone who opines that I should have upped my ante, I reply: "Up yours!"

But if you would like me to Up Your Auntie, send me a picture of her and I'll let you know. (No Fatties.)

³ One nurse was so disbelieving (thinking, I guess: How could a geezer who looks like this guy have such a healthy heart?), that, after first counting the pulse for 30 seconds and doubling the number (which came to 42), she decided to take my pulse again for the full sixty seconds - you know, just in case I had that unique kind of heart that likes to sneak most of its beats in during the second half of each minute. But after a full minute, she came up with 40 or so again.

"Don't feel bad," I consoled her: "Most of my blood is currently in my penis because you've been holding my wrist so long and my wrist is one of my most sensitive erogenous zones. So maybe that's why."

I was hoping this would get her to offer to take my pulse by holding my penis, but it didn't work.

Can't blame a guy for tryin'. Man, just once I'd like to see real life follow the rules of a pr0n movie.