{"id":481,"date":"2014-10-02T06:46:56","date_gmt":"2014-10-02T13:46:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/?p=481"},"modified":"2014-10-02T06:46:56","modified_gmt":"2014-10-02T13:46:56","slug":"middle-aged-marathon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/?p=481","title":{"rendered":"My Middle-aged Marathon"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Marathon\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

By Jack Edwards<\/strong><\/p>\n

Few things are more fundamentally wholesome than a high school fundraiser – a bake sale, a bottle drive, or, in the case of my daughter\u2019s cross country team, a forced run of out-of-shape parents over a grueling 5K race course. And if you aren\u2019t a runner or haven\u2019t used the metric system lately, five kilometers in miles equals three heart attacks and a stroke.<\/p>\n

Some number of years ago, a group of demented high school runners at my daughter\u2019s school, which should remain nameless, so I\u2019ll only reveal its initials \u2013 Sheldon High School, hatched a cunning idea. These young minds, with as yet undiagnosed psychotic tendencies engineered a scheme to recruit unsuspecting and wholly unprepared family and friends to participate in a 5K run at the bargain price of $25, or $5 per \u201cK.\u201d\u00a0 And, like a fungus, it spread.\u00a0 I personally found out that I had signed up three days after I had signed up.\u00a0 One little problem \u2013 I had not \u201ctechnically\u201d run in 35 years.\u00a0 The good news was that I had four days to train.<\/p>\n

The first challenge I faced was that the closest thing I had to running shoes were a pair of leather wingtips, which feature all the impact absorbency of granite. So my wife took me (yes, like I\u2019m ten) to a specialty running store.<\/p>\n

A female clerk approached us and asked if she could help. Of note is that it was 100 degrees outside, and she was wearing a giant stocking cap.\u00a0 No, it wasn\u2019t 100 degrees inside, but it was like talking to someone at the North Pole who was wearing a bikini.\u00a0 She told me to walk across the room while she kneeled down like she was lining up a putt \u2013 except she was looking at my feet.\u00a0 Understand that I had no idea who this woman was.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t 100% certain she even worked at the store.\u00a0 Then she stood and announced that I was rolling my ankles.\u00a0 She told me that the solution was a pair of running shoes that will push my retirement back three to five years.<\/p>\n

Upon arriving home, I immediately announced that I was going on a run. My run consisted of bolting from my driveway like Prefontaine and maintaining a blistering pace for a full five yards before remembering that the final remnants of my knee cartilage parted company with me during the Carter administration.<\/p>\n

Finally, the Big Day arrived.<\/p>\n

My wife and I arrived for the race thirty minutes early. People were jogging around warming up.\u00a0 I walked slowly to the check-in table, strategically reserving my energy for the race.\u00a0 I signed in, they issued me my \u201cbib\u201d (the paper number you pin to the front of your shirt so they can confirm you came in last).\u00a0 After a period of milling about, we lined up (or really \u201cgrouped up\u201d) behind the starting line.\u00a0 I positioned myself toward the back, so I wouldn\u2019t get run over by all the skinny moms who had a take-no-prisoners gleam in their eyes \u2013 one of which was my wife.<\/p>\n

The race was pleasant enough with the high school team members lined up along the race to make sure we didn\u2019t accidently veer off course and end up sitting in a bar someplace. Their common refrain being, \u201cKeep it up!\u00a0 You\u2019re doing great!\u201d which was code for, \u201cWe can\u2019t believe you\u2019re still alive!\u201d<\/p>\n

I managed to \u201cfinish strong.\u201d I blazed down the homestretch into the shoot like a lightning bolt as a result of my clever strategy of walking long stretches of the course along the way.\u00a0 As proud as I was with my performance, however, next year, I\u2019m begging them to hold a bake sale.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jack Edwards Few things are more fundamentally wholesome than a high school fundraiser – a bake sale, a bottle drive, or, in the case of my daughter\u2019s cross country team, a forced run of out-of-shape parents over a grueling 5K race course. And if you aren\u2019t a runner or haven\u2019t used the metric system […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[349,346,347,18,532,33,19,6,348,7],"class_list":["post-481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","tag-cross-country","tag-fun-run","tag-fundraiser","tag-funny","tag-humor","tag-laugh","tag-lol","tag-parenting","tag-running","tag-teenagers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=481"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":483,"href":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions\/483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}