Wineglass

"You can't fool the marathon."

-Anon

A brief, late post today. P was given the gift of a Friday off, and there's been a lot of lazing around here, treating this as a tactical Saturday of sorts because I have to fly my sorry self back to Florida on Sunday. A one-way plane ticket was $1040.00, and I'm traveling simply to attend a Monday morning hearing in Alabama (the good people in the Heart of Dixie can't spell Zoom, and their courts don't appear to use it), so expense matters. Plus, I'll get the chance to zone out at 8,000 feet and meditate a little. My own Sunday morning worship service.

But first that morning I will run 13.1 miles. I signed up months ago to run the Wegman's Wineglass Half Marathon here in Corning, figuring a goal would get me back on track with regard to maintaining some semblance of a physical fitness regimen. Then there were two trials, and when this Alabama hearing was scheduled, plus a mediation that was supposed to happen in PC today, I gave up and accepted that there would be no half marathon for the Donkster.

Things changed when the mediation cancelled due to Hurricane Ian, my flight down last Wednesday cancelled due to mechanical issues, and the possibility reemerged to spend Sunday morning trotting down the valley with a few thousand other folks.

But with no real training? I've run more half marathons than I can count, but it's been a few years. The farthest I've run this summer was maybe five miles total. I'm counting on base, the fact that my cardiovascular system knows the drill well enough to slog through to the end. Never mind that until three days ago I was walking around with a heart monitor. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, I guess I could "bonk", or "hit the wall", terms runners use to describe when due to inadequate training they burn up all the glycogen in their/our muscles, and continued forward locomotion becomes an excruciating ordeal. But I've never bonked running a half, even hungover. I hit the wall a couple times running full marathons, but there's something that happens at about Mile 20 that either you've prepared for or you haven't, and if it's the latter your coordination unravels, your brain sugar drops and dead relatives start taunting you along the race course. It truly stinks. But I'll be sipping a Gatorade at the finish line a good seven miles before that becomes an issue.

So after I finish drafting this hearing memorandum and trying to convince a very worried client that we have her situation well in hand, I'll walk with P down to the CMOG to pick up my race packet, and maybe try to find a foil windbreaker to wear to the start line and then discard. From there I'll hang around with my lovely wife and enjoy the last couple days before I head south.

And so it goes.