At the risk of boring you (oops, too late) with what is, after all, only a recreational past-time, I learned something rather eye-opening after my run today. As you all know (because I’ve hit most of you up for the fundraiser part), I’m running my first marathon in a couple of weeks, so today was my last “long” run before the real-deal.

I ran from the Safeway in Pacific Grove down past the Asilomar and around Monterey Bay out to Ft. Ord and back and was at a pretty good (for me) pace of 8:12 by the time I’d done my 20 miles. In my age group 8 minute miles are enough to qualify me for next year’s Boston Marathon which I’m kinda happy about. Trouble is (here’s the “eye-opener”part) the little computer-chip thing I wear on my foot calculated that all that effort only burned off about 2400 calories. That might SOUND like a lot, but I’ve eaten more calories than that in a single pizza pig-fest. From now on I’ll need to tell myself “is that donut really worth running to Ft. Ord for? AT A QUALIFYING PACE!” Geez.

And I know an apology is in order for the shirt-less thing that I’ve been doing lately. I’m having some, ahem, issues with what is normally an innocuous part of the male anatomy. I’d been warned that it could happen, but, frankly I thought it was just a fish tale. Nope, nope. Nipple abrasion is real and literally irritating; time to break out the band-aids. (The things I put in this blog…shameless.)

And to make matters worse, the shirt-less look ain’t as purdy as one would hope with all this training. Running up and down all those stairs at Carmel Beach alone should have been enough to counter the beer-belly, I’d have thought. (Before the demon foot calculator mocked my efforts, that is.)

Ahhh…middle age.