Thursday, October 11, 2012

In a delicious twist of events, everybody in my 5K group who registered back in June–optimistically so, at an “early bird” price of 40 bucks a pop–bailed out this week. It was a comprehensive abandonment of ship, with back surgery, weddings, and family matters rounding out the spectrum of reasons. I haven’t donned my running shoes since Saturday, frankly, but neither have I consumed a bacon cheeseburger this week, yet, so my hope is this balances the cosmic scale somewhat.

I know why I should stick with it, make no mistake. There are the immediate health benefits. On the two days I ran, sleep was deeper and more fulfilling than I can recall in years. More importantly, regular exercise would be the key to breaking my sedentary cycle of work and media consumption, the lynchpin to the lifestyle I know I should have. It’s just so goddamn hard.

There was a time when the contrarian within would lap this shit up and exult in the fact that everybody else quit. But that was my younger self and now, being old and infirm and unable to run more than 1.2 miles, the prospect of following the crowd seems wholly acceptable. Everybody’s doing it, after all. Or not, as the case may be.