#4 Running Nirvana Is...

Wherein I recount my running highlights for the year...as if any of you care.


There are few things that I regret with this blog. I’ll pretty much talk any subject, with any degree of detail (including secretion levels and content), for any length of time. In fact, that’s one of my more endearing qualities: the ability to continually bring up uncomfortable and/or annoying topics long after the interest in those topics has faded. As Mrs. Nitmos can attest, I’ll squeeze the same joke, twisting and turning it, until every last drop of joke juice leaks out. In other words, I’m the Dana Carvey of repetitive joke telling.*

For example, I thought it would be amusing to march – marching band style, shoulder-to-shoulder and in step - from our living room up the stairs to bed one evening. I thought this would be a nice bonding moment. Plus, with me as the sexytime Drum Major, who knows where it would have led (cue “wah, chi, chi, wah-wah” music). I tried to get her to stand in place so we could get our steps together. She was having none of it. At this point, most folks would let it drop right?

Most folks ain’t me. I’m now working on roughly 17 days in a row of trying to get Mrs. Nitmos to march with me. Now she’s dismissively – and derisively – ignoring me. If I could just get her to do it once, I could then move on to the rented band uniforms I have hidden in our closet. The rental bill is adding up.

Because…this one time, at band camp…

#4 Ass Fruit

What does this have to do with magical 2008 running moment #4? As usual, very little. Except that this particular race spawned a joke that I had a hard time shaking out of my own head. Though I loved the imagery, I regret mixing a discussion of fruit – which I eat regularly – with a discussion about propellants from my anus.

Of course, I’m talking about the 5k race I ran in July for which I was striving to break 19 minutes. Back then, I was pretty sure fruit would shoot from my anus if I accomplished the goal. I did, in fact, accomplish the goal and there was fruit on the ground behind me but I don’t have independent confirmation as to its source.

Over the next few months, fruit consumption became an arduous task. Just where did this fruit come from? Did some marathoner in California have a similar goal and now this delicious looking apple I’m about to sink my teeth into is the, ahem, fruit of his PR?

That was one particular post that came back to bite me in the ole apple shooter.

The second thing I remember about this 5k, besides setting a PR at this distance by 1:06, is the internal debate I had around the 2nd mile marker. There’s always that point in a race where you either decide to go for broke or ease off a bit. In the Detroit Marathon in October, I opted to ease off a bit at the finish. However, at this particular 5k, I decided to pour it on and push myself to the puke threshold. In hindsight, I regret neither of these decisions.

Some races get ripped from you due to a physical breakdown. Some races go so well you never need to ask yourself the question. Some races want you to “pay” before “you run on my goddamned course” and “drink my water and eat my food”.

But, in some cases, you are confronted with THE question: What are you willing to pay for that PR?

It’s fight or flight time.

I remember that moment vividly in my 5k. I decided to run harder that day either until I finished or collapsed in a heaping pile of finely tuned, granite carved man flesh along the road.

No matter how you answer it though, it is always a memorable moment.

With or without the fruit shooting from your ass.

Happy trails.

* I know nobody cares about Dana Carvey anymore but, seriously, how long was he going to do George Bush Sr. and Jimmy Stewart impersonations. Years 1-3 were kinda amusing. Years 4-12 got pretty pathetic and embarrassing. Now, just his physical presence on TV– without even opening his mouth – initiates a punching mechanism within me.