Hi. I’m Jank, and I’m lazy.
One of the biggest challenges that faces most of us is just getting our butts out the door. I know that I’ve got a terrible habit, especially on Saturdays and Sundays of saying “Well, I get up for work every other day of the week, don’t I deserve to sleep in one day?” And I probably do, and there’s always an opportunity to run later in the day, so I roll over and wait for #2 son to fly in the door and do the flying leap onto the bed when he’s ready for me to make him breakfast.
Then we have breakfast, and I can’t run right after I eat. So we go to the hardware store, and by the time we get home, it’s time for lunch, and I can’t run right after I eat. So we have lunch, and I start into a project in the house or in the yard, and have a couple beers, and then I can’t run on a full stomach, so what the heck, I’ll just run tomorrow morning. 12 hours later, the cycle repeats, except Sunday School and church replace the trip to the hardware store. (Melissa, my long-suffering wife, usually avoids my fate, since she was born with a double ambition gene).
Today was on track to be another typical Saturday on which I’ve blown off my Saturday run, until the lovely and talented Annalisa tweeted:
I really want to be drawing but I have a migraine. :(
— Annalisa (@anaphase) February 23, 2013
I replied:
@anaphase I really want to be running but have a couch. Not quite the same thing as a migraine, I know.
— Bill Jankowski (@billjank) February 23, 2013
And thought about trying to sit on the same lame couch.
But, I’ve had some awful hangove.. uh, headaches, Mom. And I know folks who have migraines, and know that a headache is to a migraine like a Tonka truck is to an open pit mine dump truck – orders of magnitude different. So then the guilt kicks in at trying for a cheap laugh at someone else’s pain, and of sitting on a couch when there’s beautiful (if slightly damp) roads waiting for me out my door, and then my beautiful (and long-suffering) wife, who’s already banged out five miles while the boys and I were at pancake breakfast for the church mission trip, and …
Enough already – I had to get out the door.
So, I suited up, walked out, and the cool day had turned damp. Light sleet coming out of the sky. Enough to where I might be able to justify going back to the couch. ‘Cept – no.
An hour later, I stroll back in the door. The run wasn’t a particularly special one – 6 miles at slug pace, and about a quarter mile cooldown walk with a gratifying cloud of steam coming off of me like in a superhero comic after a battle. And a lightness in my step for turning an ordinary weekend into good base miles.