Training & Complaining
No running for me, thank you very much
This time of year, Missouri lives in a cold-storage state of mind. We’re stockpiling holiday cheer and consumptive orgies for round 2, having just overindulged at Thanksgiving and lazily eyeballing the birth of Christ as personified by televisions going on sale at low, low prices. One particular day, the weather turns cold, very cold and we brace for it with ever-louder holiday music and a fondness for melted cheese dip. Belts get loosened a notch and we analyze football games on the weekend while inflatable Santas keep watch over the neglected leaves in our yards.
No wonder people hate themselves over the holidays.
We cook like the end of times is nigh, we apply subtle social pressure to one another (“hey, are you already done shopping for the kids? Bob knocked his all out last week. What an asshole”), we pretend not to notice the wagging finger of the devout as they clamor for us to remember the Christ in Christmas, and we force smiles to one another as we anticipate yet another two weeks of our children NOT being school and tearing our homes apart all while we seethe inwardly and debate the merits of child labor laws in our minds. It is enough to make you pray to the baby Jesus in the manger to smite down the inventor of Black Friday in a righteous fury. THAT would have set the tone for history, in my opinion.
But since Jesus has not seen fit to smite down those who would program holiday music to begin the day after Halloween, I need to find other ways to avoid fits of freezing temper tantrums. Workout burnout comes quickly to the short attention spanned, and there’s something cleansing about running that even motivated me to write about it the other day (here). In this weather, though, running is pure misery, in some respects. Grown men end up wearing tights (guilty), snot meanders onto your upper lip more frequently, and it’s hard to catch your breath in cold jabs. Misery, it turns out, loves company. I know someone who I can force to run with me, even on those days when my runner-wife decides she can’t bear to watch my painful loping: the dog.
He’s been signed up to run the Frosty Paws 5k with me on December 10, and he didn’t even sign a consent form. To be fair to the poor bastard, I thought he might be in need of a training run or two, since he’s been living like a damn spoiled Saudi prince at the house. That picture above? His normal workday, personified.
So we ran this morning. He was less than impressed, and after taking a prolific dump somewhere near mile one, I could tell his heart just wasn’t into it. Clearly, he was missing his daytime episodes of Animal Cops Houston and pining for another rendition of “White Christmas” to be cranked over the airwaves. With a droolish curious look on his mug, he trotted alongside me full of the attitude you’d expect from a teenager, only to be excited by the taunts of random squirrels and the chance to pee on new trees. That’s ok….if I’m going to have festive cheer foisted upon me, he’s going to have cold runs forced upon him in anticipation of a race in a few weeks. It’s the holidays, dammit. Show some spirit.