Running to Stand Still

Happy 2013 everyone! It’s the last week of the Christmas break here, and since I’ve caught up on all the TV shows and pleasure reading I’d fallen behind on, I’m all out of excuses not to update the blog. While the excess amounts of sleeping, eating and just lazing around I’ve been doing in general are blog-worthy material if ever there was any, to be sure, I want to keep up the appearance that I’ve actually done something with my life during the vacation here. So, ladies and gentlemen, read on and prepare to enjoy the best exercise blog you’ll ever read. Today. On this website. By this author.

Those of you looking for the kinds of workouts responsible for churning out the gladiators featured on the Starz Channel’s Spartacus (to be kept away from children at ALL costs, by Jupiter) will be sadly disappointed here. MY kind of Classical Greco-Roman athlete is the Athenian soldier who ran the 26.2 miles from the Plains of Marathon into the Athens city-center to deliver his message of victory, a feat I hope to accomplish this coming April in Boston; my attempt will hopefully not culminate with Pheidippides’ fatal heart attack (fingers crossed), and I personally prefer running in Saucony shoes instead of his trademark “NIKE!!!!!” but I digress.

For those of you with more humble aspirations, here are some of the best reasons I’ve encountered over the years to keep you motivated towards pounding the pavement (or treadmill, if you must):

1) Runners get the best shoes! Footstrike and stride are two huge factors and obviously change from person to person, but a dedicated runner usually racks up a new pair of shoes ever six months or so, just as the old pair is wearing down. There are some pretty funky colors out there, and showing off your swag (an area I know soooo much about) during a run is always fun.

Case in point. Fingers crossed, these suckers will be the ones to carry me across the Boston finish line!

2) The most obvious of any reason I can give, running EXPONENTIALLY improves your health. Back in elementary and middle school, I came down with some kind of serious cold basically with every new moon cycle. Since I started running freshman year of high school, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been that sick. Of more practicality to me at the moment: as anyone who’s ever visited Holy Cross can tell you, the hills are monstrous, and you take any help you can get in climbing up them. Solid leg muscles created through running are as good a help as anything I can think of, and if it lets me get from Kimball to Lehy just a little more easily, I count that as a resounding success. 

3) A runner’s fridge is always well-stocked. After some-odd miles of hard exertion, nothing spells relief to a runner like G-A-T-O-R-A-D-E. Or Powerade… or Vitamin Water. Whichever one wants to offer this humble blog an endorsement – to the winner goes the spoils!!

As you can see, I have a drinking problem

 4) To me, this one’s the kicker. Say, for example, two of your hobbit friends are kidnapped and you need to quickly travel across the New Zealand landscape for the entire opening of a movie to rescue them. Or, as my friend The Doctor here will show you, say you’re being chased down by a group of Cybermen… What are you gonna do??? Well, friends, if you can call yourself a runner, the problem’s already solved.

 I’ve run out of TV/movie references to throw in at this point, and if I’ve done my job right you’re lacing up your shoes as you read this. If not, what are you doing??? The Cybermen are coming!! Get outa here!!

Need I say more?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 16th, 2013 at 7:27 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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