A Step Forward: In the Running

This weekend I should be able to get a little more backfilling done here: address comments from Spartacus (he and the family are on Spring break, so who knows where they're Roman! heh-heh…), insert URLs/links, and so on. Weather looks like it'll be ugly… although there won't be any more snow for the next seven or eight months, unless Ragnarok's around the corner. Good. 

Next weekend has me and Marine-brother doing another 5K (first since October), back in the Pennsylvania town where we buried our dad. And in May, there'll be another 5K in the beautiful, big little town of Fredneck – er, Frederick. That's a rural, west-central Maryland town I wouldn't mind settling down in: some cobblestoned walkways downtown, nice shops there selling everything from antiques to Wiccan gear to Catholica (great little Catholic bookstore there I've found), good restaurants, and occasional claims to fame, such as Barbara Fritchie, Francis Scott Key (they named a shopping center – and their minor-league baseball team – after him!), and – do I have this right? – a military base where chemical and biological weapons are tested. 

Bear in mind that I stand maybe five-ten, five-nine, soaking wet; on my tiptoes I weigh <very embarrassed cough> about 220 pounds… yet a mere quarter-century ago I was under 150. Sassy-lassie daughter Shelly says I looked hot when I was twenty-two (which was when her mom and I were dating, and got married) – obviously I've grown out of that embarrassment as well. Anyway, I'm in borderline-poor shape. Blood pressure's quite nice (around 118/78), but at my last blood test, my cholesterol was too high; most of the exercise I get is running up and down the steps at work, or striding (I don't merely walk if I'm by myself) up and down the halls, or scooting my chair around behind my desk. 

So a more realistic – and demanding – regimen is called for. Still, if I start a 5K, I finish it. Of course, I'd like to finish it on the same day, you know? Just kidding; I do it in about forty minutes, maybe less – although I walk and trudge it more than actually run it, even when I don't get shin splints: my determination is there, but my stamina still needs oomph. But I can't not run. And I know I can do something about my equator, as Dad used to call it. He lost (my guess) fifty-some pounds over just a couple weeks, back in the late eighties; all it took was nearly dying of diverticulitis. My own regimen will be a little less demanding than ending up with a <weak drum-roll> semi-colon. 

Having a Marine brother helps. During my last run in that Pennsylvania town (that's that one last October), he circled back around for me, and started using his best drill-instructor encouragement… but kindly and encouragingly, and more than once I got my speed back up. And that was a 10K, the first I'd ever tried (been running these things, on and off, nearly ten years). 

So, sure, I'd like to be hardly more than half the man I am now. This will be difficult, and I will not set my sights that far down the road, so to speak. Today first, then tomorrow, then next weak – I mean, week.