You Better? You Bet

When I'm sick, I tend to always backtrack and start thinking what I did to get myself sick or at least start looking back trying to remember anyone in my vicinity that was visibly ill so I can quietly hold them accountable.  Then, of course, there's always blaming the weather changes and just the season, or whatever.  The thing is, I'm not a December illness person.  In fact my last recollection of being that sick near the holidays was when I was 6 and had chicken pox.  So what went wrong?

Well, as far as blaming people around me, there are plenty of options.  It seems like, taking a non-scientifically random sample, about every 10th person had the same throat/sinus/achey thing going on.  I could also blame myself for under-dressing when going out in the cold, and keeping on wet running clothes way too long (like the one day I wore ratty clothes running and immediately went out to the cold garage to change my oil without a coat).  Even easier, I could blame me for the recent diet (or lack thereof).  C'mon, you've seen what I've been putting up here.  It's an artery clogging nightmare.  If there were a human equivalent to the Castrol GTX commercial where they bomb a car with oil sludge, I'd be looking to the sky and trying to avoid a torrential downpour of butter and buckets of cheese, or maybe that marshmallow goo from when they wax Mr. Stay Puft in Ghostbusters.

Ever wonder if it was delicious?

Anyway, I didn't come up with any real cause, but I did have to think to myself, "If I'm avoiding crap food when I'm sick, why don't I do this when I'm well?"  So I'm going to try to get nearer to the wagon if not actually on it again (at least most days).  I had a really good winter last year, and I need another one to stay on track as I try to ramp up even a bit more next year.

One problem with that is keeping focus right now.  With the Witchy Wolf cancelled, there's not really even a long race on the horizon until April or so.  That throws a small wrench into all my high and mighty 2012 goals.  Even if I haven't said what they are yet, there are already two races that I had the rug pulled out from under me on.  The first I've already mentioned, and the second was Bayshore, where I really wanted to do the half marathon, and it sold out in like 4 hours.  I tried several times in the morning to load the website (when work slowed down enough) on December 1st to no avail.  When I was finally able to load it after lunch, all the slots were gone.  I thought for a second about going for the full, but I really wouldn't want to train for my first marathon and have it be a down and back course.  That just seems like something a lot more mentally challenging than a loop or something like that.  I just thought back to the Martian being my first half, and being annoyed/discouraged that a good chunk of that was down and back.  I'm not really interesting in setting up that same frustration for my first full.  Besides, it's pretty early for me to lock into something I haven't, as of yet, even come close to being able to do.

I need some early year races to look forward to that aren't ones I could run (at least now) with a beer helmet on after competing in a Nathan's hot dog eating contest.  Speaking of, even if I rededicate to turning over yet another new leaf (progress is still progress kids...I'm not shooting for anything more than improvement), I mean to get myself into Rockford's Hot Dog Hall of Fame in this upcoming new year.

It will be mine, oh yes

However, I continue to decline my friend's insistence that I could conquer Mt. Nacheesemo if I wanted to.  I don't believe I could.  I can't eat like that anymore*.  Anyway, ladies, this is why we live shorter lives than you.  Those fewer years aren't anything but the accumulation of minutes of life lost due to dares that our other male friends have forced upon us over the years.  Each one takes its toll on the body, and each group of men has a different dare protocol, but in the end these practices are all a danger to male public health.  Be on the lookout for the warning signs that your significant other is a dare taker.

1)  He's constantly insisting he can do things to a group of men that insist otherwise

2)  One of his catchphrases is "Challenge Accepted"

3)  There are overwhelming amounts of discarded milk jugs, cinnamon spice containers, and Saltine boxes in the "man cave"

Anyway, outside of all that, I'm well again.  I went out for a late night run today with the Tron shirt and a new little $5 toy (a Nathan LED Safety Strobe).  Now, I've looked at a few of the reviews for these and they're all mixed, but at the end of the day, it's $5.  I didn't have any issues with it coming unclipped like some of Amazon reviews complained about, and I had the thing on my wristband, so it was jerked around pretty decent.  Honestly, the most important thing for me was that the designer put enough thought into it for one of the settings to have the lights blink sequentially one way and back the other.  Visibility and battery life be damned, I say, I'd rather buy a light that blinks like the front of Kitt from Knight Rider.  That's the important thing.  





"A shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a blogger who does not exist"



* - Unless I get into that unexplained zone of insatiable hunger that exists with the right amount of "the sauce," and there are a lot of breweries/brewpubs down there.  Even then, I'm still probably looking at pretty long odds.