30 Days of Gatorade: Where's My Rabid Turkey?

"Veronica and I are trying this new fad called, uh, jogging. I believe it's jogging or yogging. It might be a soft j. I'm not sure, but apparently you just run for an extended period of time. It's supposed to be wild."--Ron Burgundy, "Anchorman."

Well, there is no going back now.

I have officially signed up to run in the 7 a.m. race of the Long Beach 5k Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving Day.

I am not in shape for this. What the heck was I thinking?

The Turkey Trot is brought to you by Long Beach’s Community
Action Team, led by Mr. Justin Rudd, whom my girlfriend Karen is convinced will
one day “disappear into a blinding light of perfection” for all the good work
he does making our world a better place. (But I think my nickname, “The Bono of Belmont Shore”, is far catchier.)

This will actually be the 3^rd such time I will have participated in the event, but since I skipped it will have been about 2 years since I tried to run this distance. Oh, I can already hear the Long Beach runners out there saying “5k is nothing” as you all loiter around Runner's World on Second Street, judging us non-runners (or as we call ourselves, “walkers”).

I do admire you runners greatly however, so much that I make it a tradition on Long Beach Marathon day to grab a few donuts and go down to Ocean to wave at all the wonderful, sweaty and hard-breathing people.

But I am firmly of the opinion that running is rather silly, and one should not run 5k on Thanksgiving unless being chased by a pack of rabid Turkeys.

It’s not that I am extremely out of shape; in fact for my age; I would say that I am somewhat “fit.” Not “what time does the next spin class start?” fit, but I am not too bad considering my propensity for falling into “ice cream death spirals” and having Valentino’s pizza on speed dial.

I try to make it to the gym about 4 days a week, and Murphy dog makes certain that he walks me around to his favorite neighborhood spots every day. It’s just that usually my time at the gym is spread out between cardio, weights, and wishing I was back in bed. I do get time on the treadmill, but no matter how good the tunes are on my Ipod, even seven minutes feels like an eternity.

So what I plan to do from now until “Trot day” is to check in with the Patch periodically and give updates on just how the training is coming along. The sore feet, the aching hips, the “carbo-loading” of sausage pizza and Stone IPA’s. I figure if Trish Tsoi-A-Sue can give us her wonderful “100 Days of Lemonade” about art and creativity, then perhaps I can provide the Patch with “30 Days of Gatorade” about sweat, pain and the thought: “why did I
ever think this was a good idea?”