Yesterday was the day! But yesterday came and went, and here we are in today, and necessarily so, given the laws and boundaries of physics.

So it appears that the laws of biology and chemistry are more forgiving. Who knew? Just because the little  plastic gestation table reads "DUE DATE: FEBRUARY 1" doesn't mean that the woman's body can't do something else entirely. I mean, the woman's body can do something else entirely -it's what men, and especially husbands, know. So we're a bit overdue, which ordinarily wouldn't concern me since the virtue of punctuality has never been high on my list. It's different for Mrs. Ditchman, who has in the past claimed a biochemistry akin to fabled German clockwork. So I have deferred to her, and here I find myself tapping my fingers, in the face of it all.

It's been the source of some stress around here, with Home Show appointments and the weight of winter bills upon us. Not to mention the children, who, I'm sure, look to the coming of this new baby with some hesitant mistrust. All will be well in the end, I remind them. That is, if it's not the death of me:

Yes, it's true. I was denied health coverage because of my "impending fatherhood." Forget the fact that I've been a father for more than half a decade, but am I missing something here? Is there something inherently dangerous to fatherhood that makes one a high risk for an insurance company? If I had known that I could be sucking down Red Bull and cigarettes and bunji jumping into animal fat, I'd have been indulging since 2006. Truth is, I probably shouldn't be applying for health coverage from a company that isn't sure what sex I am, anyway. (See: "Mr./Ms. Hawkins")

So my death-defying peregrination has been put off, of late, and if it's such a dicey endeavor, I am glad of it. Still, it is Groundhog Day, and the repetition of the daily schedule (don't make plans too far from the hospital, monitor wife's contractions to no avail, etc.) has me nonplussed, mildly concerned, and a tad stressed. One man can tolerate diminished testosterone levels and exhibit acute nesting behaviors only for so long.

I looked up the recipe for the salad that induces labor on the Internet and found a few acupressure points I might try, among other things. There was also this calm, sagely advice: "Don't worry. No one stays pregnant forever." Truly encouraging. I might note that on my health care applications.

~

Oceanside has finally made the great transition to automated trash bins. Grey for trash, blue for recycling, green for yard trimmings -in case no one is yet clear on the concept. Why it took so long to make the migration I have no idea, but here we are, finally. I love the trash man. I love what he does and am so grateful for it, and I would lavish high praise on him in other ways, if I could. It's been said that the trash man has done more for public health in the past hundred years than every doctor in the world, and, if it's even slightly true, I admire it. The trash men are heroes, and they deserve our admiration, respect, and good pay. But, as in any relationship, change is inevitable.

Last week, a large moving van arrived in our cul-de-sac and four men in bright yellow safety vests got out and marched the new bins to our curbside, in what seemed a colorful spontaneous parade. They also handed out a pile of fluorescent yellow stickers to every house. Stickers which read "TAKE ME" in bold, black letters. These are not the affectionate Valentines you might expect, but rather the thoughtful method by which the old trash cans will be hauled off. It solves the age-old problem I had presented many years ago in a play I wrote called... -okay, I can't remember the title. But in the play there was a minor character: a belligerent old woman who couldn't get the trash man to dispose of her old trash cans. I had in mind a sweeping metaphor and cautionary life lesson about throwing out "trash", and sometimes having to get rid of the entire "trash can", and then encountering a system whereby it was impossible to do so. Something about a life, and the waste we create, and how on some sore days I regrettably wished the trash man would just haul me off with the cans. In the end, it was an inartful metaphor, made little sense, and the script ended up in the garbage.

But I can't bring myself to throwing away my old trash cans, which still work perfectly as simple tools, the way a good, reliable hammer or screwdriver never wears out. I was rather fond of the old, traditional way of dragging the trash cans down the driveway to the curb every Tuesday night. I can't explain it, but I liked the tactile connection it gave me to my refuse, the way I like mowing my own lawn and reading an actual newspaper. And then the garbage man would arrive early morning, mid-week, in his greasy overalls and dirty gloves. He'd pull up to my house, hop out, and hoist the cans one by one, dumping them into his bin. I admired the strength it must take to clean up the whole neighborhood, and I imagine he had a deep knowledge of the lives of every family who lived near me, just by looking at their trash. He knew, (I presume, from the exhausted containers) what everyone ate, what everyone bought, what ailment they suffered and what luxury they valued. And I admit, in my embarrassment, to burying personal relics from time to time. Any evidence of my suburban improprieties I would hide beneath fruit rinds, egg shells, and rotted chicken grease to keep my life private, and off of some bureaucratic report the garbage man's assiduous supervisor no doubt demanded at the end of every work day.

Now, the truck just pulls up to the curb, the big robot arm unfurls, and the container is grabbed, lifted, dumped, and slammed back down, empty, in a dusty little tornado with a plastic bag blowing out of it. And the garbage man moves the vehicle down to the next house. He never has to get out of the cab anymore. Just sits there, operating the armature, gloveless, in headphones, and sucking down Starbucks. Becoming less of an icon, and more like every other boring, automated, mechanized thing that builds the future. But I am no less grateful that my garbage is hauled off to the memory hole every week. What a grand pleasure of modern, civilized life. Worth nearly any price.

I am equally thankful for our sewage system, but the human drama is not as compelling.

~

I don't know how we made it through the weekend without any life-changing events occurring, but it was a "Home Show" weekend, so I can see how you might have gotten your hopes up.

The weather happened like there was a sudden rift in the season, with hot air bursting out of a vent from the winter's cold, cracked earth. I wanted to spend it all getting the garden up and going, but I knew the rift would close up by weekend's end, and there are too many other tasks around here that need attending to.

I did get outside for a bit. (Since it was 77 degrees, how could you not?) I took an hour and clipped up the overgrown Cabernet vine, cutting them into asparagus lengths and bundling the twigs for some grapewood smoking later next summer. (Let me know if you have any tips.) And I pulled out the dusty old stroller. Not the sleek, ultra-modern greased-up Jogger stroller, mind you, but the old reliable perambulator. The pram. The one we've hauled from the ends of the earth to its opposing corners, slapping babies in it and pushing it over gravel paths to astonishing view points and trailheads. So the thing was a bit dusty, and I gave it a good hosing off, ready for round three.

It was also January 29th, the day the Girl Scout Cookies are released. We dressed up the wagon and dragged it around the cul-de-sac on a practice run. Stopped at neighbors who'd already purchased some and gave the Little Ditchman a lesson in salesmanship: speak up confidently, look people in the eye, and know your product. I'm the worst salesman in the world -so I admit to being more focused on the wagon decorating- but sales are what we have Mrs. Ditchman for, who, unfortunately for the day's cookie disbursement quota, was at the Home Show, doing actual sales. Or so we hoped. Anyway, kid, let's hope you have your mom's genes. Unless there's a contest for creative marketing, as I could have a hand in that.

It was also my Big Sis' birthday, who turned 50. She lives a hundred miles away, so going to the big celebratory bash put us outside of the safe zone in case we suddenly needed our midwife. But I gave them a call and enjoyed the glory of being on Speakerphone with her family, some visitors, and another sister, who was also on Speakerphone, patched in from Hawaii, via L.A. -I could hear her perfectly, if you're wondering. Funny. Here we are, old, and living in the future, and we're all still stuck in Speakerphone technology. But, hey, it works.

My older sister turned 50. FIFTY! Not that she looks it. Quite the contrary, actually, she looks younger than me at nine (okay, 7-and-three-quarters) years her younger. I mention it because it was pointed out to me and I suddenly felt old. My sister is 50?! I remember when my mom turned 40, and I thought that was old, and here we are up to fifty. That's life. You're as old as you feel. What possessed me to have another kid at this old age, is a question that will transcend the ages, and by some could be construed as child abuse.

And there's nothing like the commensurability of having children to make you feel simultaneously young again and older than Zeus. I spent a good portion of the weekend making fairy pop-up books, eating Girl Scout cookies, and having lightsaber battles, but in the end found it all exhausting, with me yearning for work. Not that I have energy for work. I'm holding out hope that when my youngest son is old enough to enjoy and appreciate good beer, I'll still be able to hold my own in the video games. There, the twain shall meet. Zeus willing.

~

Standing near the START banner in the cold and dark last Sunday morning, it occurred to me just how embattled a pursuit it all was. There we were, all 1,193 of us, stretching nervously, sipping water, bending over to tighten the laces on our shoes, tinkering with our gear and adjusting the many parts of our uniforms. No one had dared yet approach the actual start line, for some reason, and there was a good hundred feet of empty asphalt between the crowd and the beginning marker of the race. I got a photo of it, and in the frame the banner hangs there in the dark with no one under it. In the picture it appears no one had arrived for the race, and that, in all of its austerity, participants had spontaneously declined the event. The sun hadn't made itself known yet, and we quieted when a local marine sergeant began to sing the national anthem. A man behind me was holding a full-size American flag, and I presume he carried it with him for the duration of the race, as some are moved to do. The sergeant kept singing, echoing out of the public address, while the generators hummed along in the background, and when he finished a cheer went out, and the group of us solemnly moved up to the mark.

It seemed serious. We tossed aside our water bottles and put in our headphones. We high-fived each other and wished "Good luck", not really believing that it would come, exactly, but saying it to one another in place of everything else we wanted to say, everything we couldn't say, everything we didn't have time for: You and I have made it! And here we are together, about to embark on this great challenge! We are all kith and kin, and swear to spare our blood for one another this morning!

Or something heavy like that. There is no current war in this peaceful country, but this was a moment intense enough to remind you of it, and rouse emotion and anxiety enough to want to defeat any unseen foe. Then we heard the man shout, "Runners! On your marks!"and my body went into a lockdown that barred out all fear. And then... a gun shot.

There was a big cheer, a prolonged cry, and we all charged forward into the eerie darkness. The first mile took us along the banks of a mist-covered lagoon, but few noticed its beauty as we hustled to find our comfortable mojo. For the first several minutes, no one is running at their proper pace. You hear some beeping of electronic tracking devices being set and calibrated, you hear the pulling of straps and zippers, and you hear a few quiet apologies of everyone tripping over one another. And then finally, alone in our thoughts there in the pre-dawn hours, we spread out. I looked back and the START banner had disappeared around the trees in the distance, and the horizon was slowly becoming visible in the cerulean twilight. Soon, all that was exchanged with one another was the sound of a thousand footsteps, pressing forward into the marathon.

It's five miles or so before your heart is beating in time with your breathing and your footsteps, and your comfortable pace comes out. You recall all those miles you beat out in the training, and where it was once an accomplishment just to make it five miles, now it takes five miles to get in the rhythm of things. Here you look around and take it all in. At this early hour there are paltry few spectators, and the city is just unrolling the sidewalks. Storefronts are closed, but shadows move behind the counters, behind the locked glass. Coffee shops are firing up the cappuccino machines, and early risers are out with their dogs, surprised at the streetwise hubub. A few police officers have just finished coning off the main thoroughfare, and are leaning up against their squad cars with a cup of joe, and a sideways glance. Another thing you take in is a few deep breaths, and you realize the truth of the circumstance: that you are running. And you don't feel a thing.

At seven miles we're about an hour into it, out of the cityscape, and sunlight is dressing the clouds about a mile up. The day is somewhere, and it's above you. I knew that on this course, seven miles is where the big hill begins and I braced myself for the slog upwards, but it was early enough in the race that I felt confident about it -so confident that I stopped to take a picture of the sunrise. Everyone on the course was equally awed, staring up at the clouds, so my stopping in the middle of the street created the inevitable hazard and I had to shuffle out of the way before people began tumbling over me.

Something similar happens inside of you, when you stop suddenly after an hour of running. It's as if all your faculties are running in a line, with your legs out in front, and when they stop, all else -unprepared for the move- go piling over like a gag in a silent film: your heart keeps beating fast, nothing stops the sweat glands from opening full bore, and blood in every limb surges to the extremities. You get a rush to the head, and when you stare up at the clouds, you swear you see the Face of God.

But there's no time for that. Forward, keep forward, you tell yourself. It's an "out-and-back" up the hill, which means that runners go up on one side of the street and return on the other side, so you can see the leaders on their return down, running at full speed and using the power of gravity and inertia to propel them into the second half of the race.

One can't help but simultaneously be impressed by their speed and yet be somewhat mocked by it, since they are using the downhill to gain some ground and here you are still trudging up, with each step closer to the soul than the last. At some point you don't want to think about it anymore until you see a hand-drawn sign that says "USE THE FORCE". I was thinking, What force? The force of gravity? The force of inertia? The force of will? and I rounded a corner to see two Darth Vaders standing side by side at a water stop. Oh. That Force.

Volunteers at the water stops were in a friendly competition for the most spirited display, and I had found myself at the "Star Wars" themed stop -easily in the running for securing the cash prize offered by the race organizers. What possesses people to come out for stuff like this? Dressing up as a Tusken Raider at the crack of dawn to go down and pass out Power Gel and hydration fluid to air-headed runners in the local event seems as crazy to me as actually running the race, but I was appreciative of it nonetheless. I'm a Star Wars fan, and when Boba Fett gave me a high five at the tenth mile, it was just the escapism I needed to take my mind off the consuming task at hand, which was to keep running.

I rounded the corner and nearly tripped over my own support crew, friends and family who rose early and braved the elements, swearing to arrive rain-or-shine, to cheer you on in your crazy obsession. They don't exactly understand it -why you would attempt something so difficult, so painful, so ultimately juvenile and irrelevant, but they see how it's important to you, and how it's made you stronger, somehow. It's what we all want: strong friends, strong spouses, strong fathers, and if this crazy  footrace is the thing that is going to get you there, then you have our unequivocal support. But you're still crazy.

I tossed them my hat and gloves, since I was beginning to feel the heat at a mere 50 degrees, and got kisses from the family. I took a moment and let the head rush and sweat wash over me, and admired the inspirational poster my five-year-old had drawn the day before. She'd spent a proud portion of the afternoon on it, hiding it with her arms and body when I entered the room, so I wouldn't see it until race day. It was an impassioned multi-colored penwork of curlicues and flowers, hearts and fireworks, and there in the middle of it was our smiling stick-figure family, with me running, and her holding the poster she had drawn, as if in some curious multi-dimensional introspection. And also, in large letters above us, the words: GO DAD GO.

I made it to the top of the big hill soon after that, and the crew had been no small assistance. To see the smiles and cheers of your loved ones in the midst of the race is like a cocktail of fresh feathers and warm clean air. It buoys you in no comparable way, like a love letter at the battlefront. And it is impossible to respond with any due appreciation, and yet no love is lost. They have made their way through crowds and street closures, and waited patiently as a stream of strangers hastens past, just to see you for an instant, a few seconds really, looking tired and worn, and far from your wedding day best. But you get a bit of a glow out of it, and it lasts for a mile or so. It's a warm noticeable glow, and it's what they came to see.

The downhill. I knew this was when I was going to use the gravity-assist and put each foot forward a little quicker, so I gave it a little gas. You hope that the laws of physics act as some other-worldly propulsion, the way spaceships slingshot around the earth on their way to Mars, but it doesn't quite work that way. Runners in front and behind you are thinking the same thing, and though you might feel a bit heavier in the heel and knee, you gain ground on no one.

Keeping an eye on the warriors coming uphill to my left, I moved to the center divider on the lookout for my running buddy, who I knew was a minute or two behind me. We caught each other's eye and shouted out, slapping palms as we ran past each other, and it felt good to have a brother out there in the battlefield. There is no greater help than the spectator, but a shout of encouragement from a mate in the race is something different. It's the shared knowledge of comrades-in-arms. Though of different speed, we are runners nonetheless, and we know what non-runners do not, the way presidents, despite their party, share a singular experience, unknown to their constituents. But he is gone before I can absorb the passing, and as he approached his turnaround at the summit, I continued down to the base of the hill, the sight of the ocean in the distance, and the halfway point at 13 miles.

I feel good at 13 miles. So good, in fact, that I feel I can take on another 13 in no more time than it took to arrive here. But I have to remind myself of this fatal flaw of human pride. I have run enough races to know that it gets rough after the next few miles, that I am in good shape enough to smile and run painlessly a race into the teens, but that from there the real battle begins.

It's not long before the gain in speed from the downhill peters out, and I begin to feel a gradual diminishing of my pace. It's not just that. Over the next ten miles, pieces of my body are beginning to swell and hurt. Small parts of my knees have stretched thin, and cartilage between bones feels as if it is wearing through. My back is sore from holding my arms in that pulled-punch running position, and I find myself periodically dropping and dangling them to loosen myself up. I feel my toes sliding against the asphalt, which means I'm not lifting my feet as high as I was an hour back. More running like this and I will, at best, trip over the smallest crack, and, at worst, tumble over a painted line. I have to consciously remind myself to lift my legs now, which hurt from the endless repetition of it.

The old sweat on the back of my neck and on my temples has dried to a salty grit, and when I wipe my face I feel something like fine sand scrape and then dissolve into the fresh, wet sweat. I feel a slight sunburn on my nose and forehead. I feel some parts of my body rubbing raw from the chafing against the clothes: my armpits, my nipples, my groin. Volunteers hold tongue depressors with Vaseline smeared on them, and there's no shame for a runner to grab a stick, reach into their shorts, and wipe it betwixt their intimate areas.

I have blisters on my toes.

Near the twenty mile mark I see my family again. I am smiling, but less so. My wife sees it in my gait, that I am seriously tiring. She tries to encourage me as I press past, slightly embarrassed. I'm shaking my head at this point. I have about an hour to go, and I don't think I can keep it up.

Somewhere in the next mile, it happens.

I don't know exactly what triggers it, but it comes on long runs, when you are just about at your limit. You see another runner, struggling. And you see one doing well, striding by at an easy tempo. You see the faces of bystanders and you look into their eyes. Some clearly admire you, and others are shaking their heads in a forlorn jealous contempt. You see a child, facing the other way, distracted by something else entirely, and bored with it all. And you think of your own children, and how you saw them back there, so happy. Their life flashes before your eyes, back to them as babies, their births. And then, your life. Your marriage, your work, your passion. All the things you've done wrong before this, and all the joys, and the beauty of the grace you've been inordinately blessed with, in this life. And suddenly you are so proud, so happy, so filled with wonder that your throat begins to constrict and your eyes well up with tears. Emotion floods in and you can barely catch your breath to take another step, and you find yourself on the outside of your body, in the moment, and feeling everything at once.

And a heartbeat later you have collected back to the street, with the noisemakers and the clapping, the cheering and yelling, the paper cups half-filled with water that you need, desperately. You are passing some runners and others are passing you, a thousand dry leaves in a river, moving and swirling downstream, hitting rocks and rapids, spinning out of control all at once, but all swept in the same direction, in similar, senseless purpose.

I see the ground moving beneath me and I keep looking up, searching for the next mile marker. It seems to take so much longer to come, and when it does it's "Mile 22", and not Mile 23 -you swore you already passed Mile 22. So it's four more miles. Four more miles, you tell yourself. Almost a 5K, which is just over three miles. Which you run nearly every day, and which only takes 25 minutes or so. A 5K. Mile 23 should be coming up somewhere... Mile 23... Where the hell is Mile 23? Just gotta make it to Mile 23...

When you get past it, you insist to yourself that these last few miles are at least doable. That the finish is within your grasp, and if you had not been keeping pace for a personal record time, then simply finishing is all that matters anymore. Finishing. Head held high, if you can hold it up at all.

But your legs cramp up. The muscles above the knees, the big ones called the quadriceps, are pushing back. They are knotting up and fighting you, refusing to go on. Even at a walking pace they stab with pain, and I find myself kneeling down at the curb and stretching them out. I stretch them flat out, until they are wringed clean of all bad elements, and then I stand back up, order myself and all attentive muscles, back into the race. Just a few more minutes.

There is no longer mile than the Mile 25, which also stretches out, as you look up. It is an interminable mile, one that goes on as if it intended to outlive you and laugh with your descendants. And then, after that, no longer quarter mile than the torturous .2 that is lobbed onto the end of the race for a full, denaturing effect. But in that last .2 of a mile is a thoroughfare with barriers on either sides. A throng, piled high up against the rail, cheering and screaming. Yelling, if not for you, then for the whole event and the overwhelming spirit of the scene. You feel for a few minutes in your life that all those youthful dreams of being center stage in the packed arena are finally coming to light. Whatever pain you've felt in the past hours, whatever cruel torture you've brought on yourself, whatever wild endeavor you've lobbed at your ego, it all quietly falls away. You take those last few steps toward the FINISH banner, and you swell up like a giant god. A friendly, noble god who has fulfilled Olympian dreams without malice or destruction, and performed good deeds unto himself. And then, looking around at all the other qualified and commendable finishers, you feel to be a more smallish god, with no purpose outside of the fulfillment of his own simple pride. But you feel a god, nonetheless.

You glance up at the large, digital finish clock which ticks off the time without care, and it doesn't really matter what it says, at least for a few minutes. You made it. And you stagger into the finishers' corral lunging for water, or a pretzel. A banana. A coke. Anything to fix yourself, since you are finished, to be sure.

Eventually, I find my family and friends, my running mates, and they seem as alive and animated as they've ever been, where it's a taxing chore for me to do anything; walk, speak, lift my head... In time, I recoup my faculties and make my way across the parking lot to the car. Traffic waits as I stumble in front of it, and I'm surprised at my newfangled handicap and physical ineptitude. In the shuffle to get out of the way, I feel the thud of metal on my chest. The medal. The traditional award for every finisher in the marathon, placed around your neck in that staggering moment of such exhaustion, that it's almost an afterthought, that you are almost annoyed by the tradition. But the medal is draped there, on you.

And you own it.

~

Mrs. Ditchman told me that it's time I teach him to pee standing up, and to that I have no argument, as I can imagine what a challenge and a struggle it would be for her to impart this manly knowledge on her own. A dad's gotta do what a dad's gotta do, I guess, so there's no way out of it. I have to give her credit for mentioning it, though, because in the end she will be the one most likely wiping up the overspray for the next fifteen years. One would think a mother would just keep the concept to herself, as part of the vast female conspiracy to keep men from eternally leaving the toilet seat up and soaking the toilet's perimeter, but I guess they need another thing to nag the dad about. He pees all over the bathroom! You never taught him properly! He's just like you!

Of course, I'm the man for the job, as I can pee through the bathroom door keyhole while standing in the shower stall. But I've brought him in before, showed him how it goes, and he seems genuinely impressed with the act, and yet the potties were still a wee bit too high. Since I didn't think he was ready to master arcing the stream up and over the rim at such an early age, I figured we'd wait a few more inches.

But the mommy is tired of the whole time-consuming pants-down thing in public restrooms, and the nastiness of those steel public park comodes -and who can blame her? So we brought it up with the lad, gently, and told him that it's high time he learned how to go to the bathroom standing up "like the big boys do." It was met with a certain unmentionable, reserved consternation. After some discussion, it was revealed that he has some reservations about going to the bathroom standing up, at which point we realized that he thought we also meant pooping, so we had to backpedal a bit. Pooping standing up is not something I've mastered, personally, and I refuse to teach the act in any case. Gotta draw the line on the limits of Dad's wisdom somewhere.

So I anonymously looked up "education on urination", or some permutation of the phrase, on the Internet and found the suggestion to try using Cheerios as targets. Sounds fun. I'll get back to you on this.

I suspect this is among those child-rearing acts that just come up in due time and take care of themselves, but I understand that there are some cultures in the world where men don't pee standing up, so who knows? That the wall urinal is a sign of civilized society is questionable, considering that we still generally refuse to have them in our homes. (But they are available, if you want one.) And I have witnessed countless men at marathons throw decorum to the wind, aim the other way, and pee mob-like in public streets. Do a google image search on "outdoor urinal" and you will regret having exposed yourself to the depravity of man.

I guess peeing standing up is a convenience for everyone, except when it's not.

~

Today: not as cold as previous days. Perhaps we've turned, and are now slogging back to summer, no? Well, perhaps. But somehow I doubt it.

Got out and ran again this morning, the last few miles before the race on Sunday. I'd intended to take it easy and not push myself, but I found myself going fast again, against the cold. I don't notice the increase in speed when it's cold like this, but I notice the the slow burning pain in my shins, which is my legs telling me they don't normally run this way. Eventually I'll get tired and reel myself in, slowing to my more average speed, and then the shin pain will quietly go away. Right there in the middle of the run: Leg pain? Gone. It's odd. Then I just tire out and slow down, like everyone else.

Now I will reveal my race day strategy, so that all of blogdom can hold me accountable to it, since I never stick to a strategy, and just blow it all out at the starter's gun.

My strategy for Sunday is an 8:00 minute pace to the ten mile mark at the top of that hill, and then speed down at about a 7:30 mile, and then try and hold at 7:40, or so, for as long as I can. The only thing unrealistic about the strategy is that I've never intentionally gone out so slow. I can't pace myself. I can't pace myself! I've been running 7:00 minute miles all week, and can do it without too much trouble, but running 7:00 minute miles after you've already run fifteen miles is really the trick.

So you go out slow, gradually pick up the pace, perhaps, and not wear yourself out. It's simple, of course. But when you get faster you get over-confident, and the whole idea of going slower is counter-intuitive. I have to remind myself constantly: We're not going faster. We're going longer. I say "we" because that's me lecturing all of my faculties, who refuse to work in concert. I use my inside voice, but have been known to shout out loud at myself after 17 miles or so.

Did not write or run yesterday, as I was overwhelmed with work tasks and seemed to have fallen behind. It's hard trying to do everything. I have no strategy! I can't pace myself! With all these lessons, there is crossover, so it's good to diversify.

~

Colder today than yesterday. I can tell this by the ice on the roofs, on the grass, on the cars, and by the way the front door regretfully unsticks when I open it. The house does not want to let anything warm go out.

Wore the gloves this morning. And the taller socks, longer sleeves, boxer briefs, and, of course, the ear warmers. Ran fast again and didn't even notice it. Might've had another record day, if I hadn't wasted all that time waiting at the traffic signal.

People complain because it's easy to complain, and I'm no different. Complaining is the lesser path of life, as opposed to being cheerful, which is for many an uphill climb in the face of it all. But if you get up pre-dawn on a frigid January morning to go out and run three miles before your day of jackhammering at work, you deserve to do a bit of complaining. It's exercise, after all, and not exactly the "lesser path." So if you take on a decent challenge in life, I say a bit of complaining is your reward. Just try and be funny about it. It's the unfunny complainers who opt for the easy everything in life, that I can't stand.

Which is one of the reasons I love my wife, who seemed a trifle impressed that I was out the door running this morning. And later, when we spoke of the rainy race-day plans, she said half-kiddingly, "Sounds fun!" She was half-kidding. I won't explain it.

"Why do you do it?" people ask incredulously, after a long run. And they are incredulous because it sounds crazy to them, because you've been complaining, and because just a little bit of contempt might bring you down off your high horse for being so proud of yourself. But I run because it's there, because it's a challenge, and because it's healthy. I actually want to live longer, and I want to see this whole life through to the end. I had children later in life than I wish I had, and now I want to make up for it.

And I run because I can. Because it's the only sport I know. Because I have this good body that I can make better. And by "better" I mean that post-run feeling of optimism and accomplishment that lasts me six hours or so. Yes, only about six hours, but optimism that lasts six hours changes my world.

And I run because having that blood rush through my body and up to my brain helps me think better, arouses my senses, and charges my memory. Because I'm getting old, and these things are more important than ever. I got up early and missed out on some sleep, but I will sleep better tonight as a result. This morning I saw the good work of my lungs with every exhalation, and I saw the sun coming up through my breath. I felt powerful and alive, and I felt the earth spinning on its axis beneath my feet, as if I was working some cosmic treadmill. I spent thirty minutes out there, wearing the rubber off the soles of my feet, and every few minutes I'd pass another runner or walker and we would nod and smile, as we always do. Smiling at the beauty of it all, and nodding at the truth: Yes, it is. You know, and I know.

Exercise is not easy. Running is not easy. And nothing that makes you better is easy. It all takes guts -because you're gonna look stupid, hurt yourself, and eventually and inevitably fail doing it. But I feel better for being brave, at least in some small way. At least a little stronger every day.

I thought I'd deleted all the Christmas songs from my iPod but Winter Wonderland came on this morning, which made me laugh out there on the cold, icy, Oceanside streets. It's actually not a "Christmas" song, per se. If you listen to the words, Christmas is not even mentioned. I guess it's more of a happy little winter song, for what it's worth. Anyway, I like that line toward the end, there:

Later on, we'll conspire,

As we dream by the fire,

To face unafraid,

All the plans that we made.

~