A running total

I made a point to run 33 minutes on the treadmill today, to round off my theoretical mileage for the year at a nice, even 900. This is based on the fiction that I run a mile in 10 minutes; the 33 brought my total for 2010 to precisely 9000 minutes, or 150 hours.

But this is a fiction, the type that should be shelved in the "fantasy" section. All of those long runs in training for the marathon were at 12- to 13-minute pace, and I can only guess what percentage of a hash run is actual running, though I try to not credit myself with the walking and standing-around time. For that matter, my regular running pace is 10:30 or so per.

So.

I can say that this year I ran 150 hours, more or less, maybe 800 miles. I completed two 5K's, four 10K's, and one marathon (which, twenty years from now, may be my most prominent memory of the year). I mentored cross country and did ten hashes (all in the last eight weeks)...

and lost five pounds and then gained eight (for a net of plus three), to equal my highest weight ever. This seems impossible, but recently every fatty or sweet food has been as addictive to me as crack to a crackhead or cigarettes to a... um... butthead. I seem to have no control at all; I've never been simultaneously so proud and so ashamed as I am of my physical condition. I'm very healthy in a cardiovascular sense, better than some runners 25 years younger and 50 pounds lighter. But still.

Last week I carried a 30-pound jug of cat litter upstairs for Faina and it hit me that that is exactly the extra weight I carry every day. Maybe that has something to do with my knees' hurting.

But I won't run myself down, so to speak. I ran a flippin' marathon; have I mentioned that? I'm running every weekend with people half my age. And I'm proud of that.

And I'll curb my addiction and run farther in 2011. I'm looking at a half-marathon in the spring and a full one in the fall. But I'll conclude this now; I seem to be running on.