I believe it was John “Hannibal” Smith who famously said:
“It’s always darkest before it goes completely black.”
Indeed, a quick google search for “A-Team always darkest” yields the quotables page on imdb for the episode ‘The Rabbit Who Ate Las Vegas.’
I’m not running today. I said I wasn’t going to run, I was going to rest and try and kick this ankle niggling to the curb, but it’s very, very hard. I can tell I’m in a funk and that the lack of running and endorphins are negatively impacting my day. But we have to make choices and make sacrifices so that we can live to see the dawn… I just hope the dawn is brighter.
On top of the mental health issue, physically the non-running is impacting my waistline. The scales keep spinning higher… and I know it’s only been a day of not-running, but I was struggling even WITH the running to try and stabilize and then hopefully decrease the scale’s cogs motion. I’m having a pity party and the guest list is one name long.
To rally, I’m going to strongly urge my Mom go for a walk with me. She’s been doing really well at getting her mileage in. I’m also proud of her for signing up for the Kalakaua Merrie Mile event in December. To keep encouraging her… and in times like today to encourage me… I had a custom shirt made for her.
In 2014, we took a transatlantic cruise and some people organized a “Run Across the Atlantic” cumulative mileage challenge whereby participants logged miles on the ship and achieved home made 5Ks, 10Ks, half marathons, and marathon medals. It was a really fun, positive thing to do.
This year, we’re taking another trip and I wanted to do something special. So I’m going to challenge my Mom to log a full marathon distance of 26.2 miles on the ship. Three loops around Deck 4 is a mile so she’ll have to do 78.6 loops to make this happen. The cruise is 11 days, so she needs to log an average of 7.145 loops per day. I’m going to suggest she does 8 loops a day or 2 1/3 miles per day. She’s currently walking 2 miles so this seems not only do-able but downright easy! She’s got this!
And so I’m proud to announce that I’ll be sponsoring my Mom for the 1st Ever Sea Legs Marathon in September.
For her participant shirt, I did a design for her that evokes the classic Mickey Mouse Club sweater. It’s got her name on the front albeit with a little tweak for funsies. Oddly, though, I ran into some weird intellectual property issues with the company I was using to get the shirt made. They said this design violated copyright agreements:
I argued that I just drew a couple of circles but if they were worried about the fully formed mouse ears on the hat, I’d color it in, producing this alternate artwork:
Unfortunately they said it couldn’t have ANY mouse ears design on it. I briefly considered revising the back design to create a hidden Mickey layout with text forming his ears and the gobe his face but instead went a different route — as a long shot, I threw a Donald Duck-ian sailor hat on the letter “A.” I figured they’d say for sure that was a no-go but turns out they were okay with. So here’s what the front looks like.
It’s taken almost two weeks for production and shipping to get it here and I’ve only vaguely told my Mom that I ran into some IP issues. I haven’t told her WHAT the shirt is for or WHY I was having it made, other than that I was getting her something.
According to FedEx, it should be arriving today. I’m going to use it as an excuse to see if she’ll walk with me as I desperately need to do something to get moving.
My ankle be damned — I’m not asking for much, just a means to perk up and try and stave off a bit of this weightiness. This may be dumb, but at least I’m not running on it, right?
To tie back into my George Peppard opener, Thomas Bancek once said:
A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.
Speaking of Banacek, here’s a list of some of his delightful old Polish proverbs.