Odometry III

So in the upcoming continuing saga of Bungaglow Beck and Nyet, I will surely tell you the tales of meeting up with Rice friends in Virginia. And without naming names - I think it should be obvious to the people involved on both sides - some of our friends have become Macy's Parade versions of their college selves, while others have slimmed down considerably. One name to name is Brett - there's a pretty famous (in our circles) picture of him from one of our college nights back at lovett, circa fall 1996. The theme was Mount Olympus, and Brett painted himself gold. And in 1996, a gold-painted 19 year old Brett was a sight of sights - the word "Adonis" came readily to mind before the paint job, but the gilded Brett and the picture that captured him served to emblazen our memory with that association.

Fast-forward to 2007, at our wedding, and it would have been a bad idea for Brett to invest in gold spray cans. "I was fat," Brett started a sentence this past weekend, and he ended it with, "And I didn't want to be anymore." 2008, wedding edition Brett was decidedly not fat, back to 1996 Adonis standards, an impressive feat: we asked him how he did it, and he replied that he had run a marathon. And not just "run a marathon" - he had gone from effectively being unable to run a mile to running a 3:58 marathon, an impressive nine minutes pace over the course of the entire 26.2. Damn!!!

SO that was more than a little inspiring, on both sides - both the "Like Brett, if I could be like Brett" angle and the startling desire to not view the streets of New York aerially. So after doing a reasonable job going running over the past 1.5 weeks of vacation:

Saturday: 4 miles on a treadmill
Monday: 3 miles (in 103, 98% barf North Carolina weather)
Wednesday: 3 miles (ditto)
Friday: 5 miles (in 98, 98% marginally more pleasant Virginia weather)

I have decided to attack the next month and on into the future and get back into mid 90s shape. (Note - this is me announcing this so that you folks will hold me to it. Both of you). I'll never run a marathon, nor would I really want to - my knees hurt the bejeebus out of me if I run too far, and physical accomplishments like "run a marathon" smack of materialism (ha) - but I do want to amp up the running a bit and eat better than I have been. Beck is on board in the eating department, so we have been having ridiculously good fish and chicken dinners so far this week. (Beck, for the record, looks beautiful and is in great shape. I'd say we were both in neither of the above two categories mentioned, but more of a midline "have done a good job staying in shape" place). Our friends the Gringoat are visiting in a month, and so this sets a good deadline for me - I want to run somewhere between 100-150 miles before they get there, and hopefully other exercise and eating well will, I don't know, let me wear my bathing suit or something.

("Nyet, you already wore your swimsuit in front of them. Like two months ago!")

("Doh!").

Anyways, here's the odometry so far, which I will try to report on a routine basis:

Mon: 6.4 mile run, 1.6 miles treadmill, 5 miles Ellipting
Tue: 6.4 mile run
Wed: Morning Ultimate (1 hour), Disc Golf Round (1.5 miles?), 4 mile treadmill

Counting just the running, that's 18.4 miles so far. Have to be careful with my knees, so may have to tone down the initial excitement in the next few days. We'll see. I also have to be careful with my general level of OCDness about such things - I have written about this before, but there was a time in Boston where I was trying to lose weight and ended up standing outside a pizza parlor at lunch time existentializing about whether the temporary joy imbued by a slice would be worth the calories. That's no good. So, yeah, don't let me get stupid like that either.

In not self-centered news, the one and only Speckle-Bellied Jullietta is coming to Phoenix this weekend. So we will surely shower her with affection and congratulations!!! Can't wait!