(Sunday Paper, Year IV, Issue 36)

I haven’t been doing the greatest job of keeping to my goals for the new year.

I’ve kind of readjusted some, I’ve dabbled in others…but others just aren’t going to happen.

For instance: I will not be running a marathon in the last few months of the year.

The one I was hoping for was in December…and even if it was still an option, I don’t know that I would have been properly conditioned for it.

(Logistically the marathon didn’t work out. I certainly wasn’t going to qualify for a marathon, so I needed certain things to fall into place…and they didn’t.)

But - after not running all summer - I’ve been getting back into it.

There’s no chance I’ll run a marathon before the end of the year…

…but a half-marathon is not out of the question.

I’ve gone back and forth about this half-marathon.

It’s in late October, and I’ve let a couple of price increase deadlines come and go without signing up.

Every time I saw one of those e-mails I thought, nah, I can’t do it. I haven’t run in so long.

But then I ate enough ice cream to kill a horse and got back to running to try to get back into a more healthy state and my baseline has changed such that it wasn’t like starting from scratch where I couldn’t run at all…I’ve been able to increase my distance quickly and I feel like I haven’t missed much of a beat.

I promise I won’t be one of those people who overshares their running workouts - I won’t pretend like I think it’s interesting to you all…but I’m writing about it here in the interest of accountability:

On Saturday I ran 7 miles. (As you can see in the picture at the top of the post.)

I had been doing 30-minute runs and was kind of at a loss about how to stretch my stamina and Kevin (you remember Kevin) gave me some good advice - he does two shorter runs a week and longer runs once a week. (He has run a few half-marathons.)

He’s the one who has convinced me that it’s OK to stop and walk a bit even, it’s just about completing the distance. (For what it’s worth, other people have given me the short run/long run advice over the years but this time it seemed more easy for me to wrap my head around it.)

So I downloaded the running version of an app I had used when I rode my bike a few years back. (That’s also pictured above.)

And then Saturday I did 12 minutes running, 1 minute walking, 12 running, 2 walking, 12/3/12/4 and then ran the last 11, if my math is correct. It took my just under an hour ten minutes to run 7 miles, so even with the walking I was able to maintain my roughly 10-minute/mile pace. (Provided the app worked correctly and is to be trusted.) (Because I’m not so sure I trust that calories burned number.)

Next week I might do 35-minute runs during the week and an 8-miler on the weekend, then 40 minutes and 9…then maybe cut back to 30 again as the longer runs get longer.

And hopefully, come October 25, I’ll be able to tackle 13.1 miles.

Even if I have to walk a little.

Writing

*I’ve been really in a good work groove lately. And I think I’ll have a piece published elsewhere to share soon. So the writing’s been going OK.

Comedy

*Due to a scheduling quirk I have a slew of dates at The Comedy Studio this September, which is fine by me. I love going up there. I did the past two Wednesdays (OK, so one of the dates was the end of August) and they were both very good crowds for a Wednesday. And both times I expanded on some new material and mixed it together differently and I’m happy with how it went. Check ‘Comedy Shows’ above for info on the upcoming appearances there - some weekend shows coming up.

*Next Saturday is the September edition of Comedy Night at Exhibit ‘A’. You can get tickets here. If you were at Framingham Comedy Weekend a year ago in July, you saw this month’s headliner, Sam Ike, do a shorter set. And you thought he was hilarious - trust me. He crushed that night. So if you want to see him do a longer set and laugh even more, come out on Saturday night. It’ll be a fun time.

What I’ve Been Enjoying

*It’s been a while since I plugged my brother’s music. Recently I re-listened to ‘Thousand Dollar Dinners’ and it is such a good album. Also, I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while, but it’s unreal that I take it for granted that Adam Duritz regularly talks about my brother’s music and how much he loves it. Crazy.

Anyway, if you’re in New York next week, Matt is performing as Big Alice Brewing (sorry, I mean Big aLICe Brewing) releases a beer called ‘Thousand Island Dinners’ that Matt helped brew and he has other performances coming up in New York and Boston that you need to do yourself a favor and check out because I promise you you’ll enjoy the show.

Thoughts on Dog Ownership

*We started Level Two of puppy training on Saturday morning and Tate did a good job. She’s a good dog, and I think when all is said and done she’ll be very well-behaved. Right now she’s somewhat well-behaved. And to be honest, she’s a very good trainee. I could use some improvement as a trainer.

Notes

*I’ve been tracking pretty carefully since January my exercising and running - maybe I’ll post about it before the end of 2019. But that’s how I know that I hadn’t run since June 23rd….and didn’t pick up the running/walking again until August 13th (and then regularly it wasn’t until August 19th.) (When we got the dog I pretty much immediately stopped running because I couldn’t figure out how to leave the house for enough time to get a run in.)

*It was cool to log back into the app and see my old bike rides from a few years ago when I was riding my bike a lot. It’s kind of unbelievable that I haven’t even taken the bike out of the garage this summer. Oh well.

*Since Kathy is a student we qualify for an online NFL Sunday Ticket subscription, and since the Jets are promising, I’m subscribing to it. Any other year I’d be dying for the Jets to be on local TV here in Boston when the Patriots had a prime time game as they do this week, but this year I don’t care…and of course the Jets are on local TV today. But that’s OK. In the long run the subscription will be worth it. (Just not week 1 [local TV], week 2 [Monday Night Football], week 3 [versus the Patriots], or week 4 [bye week].)

*And the Mets have still managed to hang in there and get me excited about a potential playoff spot…so I still manage to have my nights revolve around them.

*I’ve been doing a decent job on Twitter recently - you can follow me there at this link. I always need to do a better job on Facebook. You can Like that page and encourage me to do better there at this link.