Day Four Fit-ty! and 451 - Standing on the precipice


Right, shape up, and look respectable! Tip top, gut in, chest out, eyes caged forward! There's a link to this here blog. And as the sign above my computer says

yeah, so the respectable thing is more for me than anyone else...


The sign was a left-over from my Mother's power of positive thinking approach to things she put in my room way back when, many years ago when I was in High Screwl..., I think I've already disqualified myself with the uh...stooping posts. (Were there more than one? oh yeah.) Though I probably disqualified myself many times during those days.

So today was a pretty monumental one in terms of the streak! Four Fitty days in a row is nice, but even more than that was the mileage. I went in to today with a total of 993.1 miles run since the streak started 1/1/08. That left the scheduled nine miler for today to push me over the cliff to 1000 miles! That was when the artificially elevated, hokey, cheesy, blogtastic non-drama began....

You see the forces of nature said (in the voive of Burl Ives,
go figure) "He will not make 1000 miles! Muhahahhaha" then the forces of nature said "Seriously, look at the guy, there is NO WAY he will make 1000 miles" followed by, "No really, this dude is supposedly running? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA" Its nice that nature can laugh. Thus everything was done to stop me from breaking the wondrous plateau.

First, Burl sent the blizzard. Fellow peeps in Colorado know what I'm talking about. The warnings for multiple feet of snow came from the weather dudes and dudettes and along with that came the fear, gnashing of teeth, looting and pillaging of Walmart, and outright panic. Usually this is followed by seventy degrees and sunshine, but in this case we got some significant snow and ice.

This means a trip to my friend the treadmill, currently located at my gym. Nice, soft, cushy deck, some annoying penance of having something on the Food channel selected by the gym staff on the TV, and I crank out my nine miles. Everything is still golden. So after fighting through the blinding snow and ice, spending two hours getting there instead of twenty minutes, I pull up to the athletic facilities. Confidence is riding high. One thousand miles is in my sights, with the celebratory activities that the wifey has planned to follow. Outsiders have been invited to the home (we take any excuse to celebrate), the catering is complete, decorations and signage I'm sure have been completed by the chil'runs, everything is set. I walk in and the desk lady says (sung to the tune of Silver Bells), "Hi we're closing in seventy five minutes."

Internal response: "AIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

External response: Ruh roh.

For normal running types, you do the math and say, 75 minutes, 6.9 miles perfect! For normal waddling types you say, oh dang, its time to bust it. Sprinted to the machine, cranked up the speed, turned up the volume on what ever dessert show I would be forced to watch, and headed off at great speed to... nowhere (love that treadmill!)

Way too long story short:

Day 451 - 7.0 miles in 73:48. Winner winner chicken dinner.
Its party time. I may do a little victory dance....

450 - 1.0 in 10:42

Comments

Vava said…
Way to crank out those precious 7 miles to get yourself over the hill! Congratulation.