Sure there are reasons, but they aren’t as fun as the possibilities

Why do I want to run a marathon?

I read something on a Web site that you need to have a specific reason for running a marathon, because it will greatly increase your chances of actually doing it. 

Fact is, I don’t really know why.

The idea first popped into my mind when I was in college and still in reasonable shape. At the time, it seemed like one of those grand life adventures college kids plan out -- traveling to Europe, road trip to the College World Series, swimming with dolphins. eating the burrito special at Big Mike’s Mexican Cantina …

But, like most college adventures, the marathon never materialized.

There’s nothing missing from my life that running 26 miles would suddenly replace and while I hope to improve my overall fitness, I feel like I made the hard change several years ago when I started running.

At the end of the day, I think I really just want to see if I can do it. 

But in the interest of having a concrete reason, I’ve decided to run to raise awareness of clumsiness.

Clumsiness is a reality.

It affects 100 percent of the population, usually at the worst time, and it is, to date, incurable.  

I have it. My wife has it. My daughter has it and we’ve noticed early signs of it  in our six-month-old son (just yesterday he was sitting normally in the living room and did a face plant right onto his stuffed monkey). 

I read that the symptoms (Dropping things, biting your tongue, stabbing yourself with pens, dribbling food on your shirt, walking into pane-glass doors, falling down stairs, falling down on flat ground, falling out of chairs, falling out of bed, tripping over your own feet, throwing aimed objects errantly, knocking full water glasses over, shooting food across the table after trying to hard to cut it, stubbing your toes, bashing elbows and shins on sharp corners, bumping your head on static objects, writing on yourself, talking to people who have left the room, spilling whole cartons of eggs, calling longtime acquaintances repeatedly by the wrong name, mistaking strangers for longtime acquaintances, waving at random oncoming traffic from your car, voting for the wrong person during election season even with the new user-friendly touch screens and back-up vote verification, writing blogs and accidentally calling your teachers “Grandma”) are ultimately treatable.

"We're all clumsy to some extent,” assistant professor of clinical neurology at the University of Pennsylvania Robert Slater, M.D. told www.mothernature.com. “It just varies from person to person.

“For the average person, a normal amount of clumsiness might be one or two awkward incidents a day. You might tip over a glass or bump into a doorway on any given day."

Ah, good. I am only six to seven awkward incidents below (or above?) average.

Slater goes on to suggest several methods of symptom relief.

First, don’t dwell on it (This will never happen for me).

Second, take a nap (Generally, after falling down in front of someone, I’d much rather just crawl under a rock). 

Third, take time to relax (Hard to relax under rocks -- too lumpy).

Fourth, exercise. (Now we’re getting somewhere). But they recommend tennis or ping pong  to improve hand-eye coordination. After two years on the high school tennis team, I can safely say the sport only enhanced my clumsiness.

Fifth, imagine your worst nightmare (Yeah, I do that. All the time. My worst nightmare would be getting chased across the slippery decks of a cruise ship by a puppet-wielding clown. I’d slide off the side of the boat, into the choppy waves below and get swallowed whole by a humpback whale. Inside the whale, the only form of entertainment is Grover Monster the Muppet who sings “It‘s a Small World” six hours a day.  I‘d be spit up days later only to discover the world supply of pizza had been entirely consumed.).

This process is supposed to help you in that imagining the worst-case scenario helps take the bite off the fear of clumsiness. But who’s going to help me with the clown, the puppet and the cruise ship?

Finally (and I’m not kidding). They recommend you bring out the animal in yourself. Imagining animals in motion, apparently, helps people be less clumsy. You imagine yourself as an animal, how every muscle in your body works together as you feel the wind your face as you run. You’re supposed to imagine these things for five to 10 minutes after an episode of clumsiness.

Got it. I see a hedgehog bumbling over the forest floor with a wolf in hot pursuit. The Wolf closes, the hedgehog rolls into a spiny ball and  … Oh.

This isn’t working. 

I guess I’ll have to give it some more time. 

Klutzes of the world, unite! I run this marathon for you. And the hedgehog.

JUST TO RECAP

I am training for a 10K in June and a marathon in November. I’m currently only running once a week while the freezing temperatures in town stick around, while subsidizing with exercises in the house. I’ll gradually ramp up the training routine until I’m running about 22 miles a week in June. From there I’ll launch into marathon training. I recommend you read the past entries to get a better idea of what I’m trying to do.

Stats for Week 2: Baseline 5K: 32:13. Baseline 10K: --. Best time of the week: 30:58 (5K). Best overall time: 26:57 (5K, June 7, 2009); -:-- (10K). Miles within the last week: 3.1. Total miles for 2010: 3.1. 

Not exactly a resolution ...

I run. It's really more like rhythmic wheezing.

But, for the better part of the last three years, I've been a semi-regular "wheezer" around my hometown. 

I'm also a sportswriter. Ever since I was little, I knew I wanted to be around sports. I grew up shooting endless free throws in our driveway and throwing footballs to myself in our backyard.

There was even a period of time after the movie "Cool Runnings," that I would push a wagon down the street in front of our house, hop on and pretend it was a bobsled (Don't try this at home, turns out wagons need someone steering while being pushed).  I even attempted to grow dreadlocks, which after a month just left me with a hefty grease slick on the top of my head, but that's another story.

For as much as I loved sports, I wasn't blessed with any God-given athletic talent. I wasn't big, tall, fast or quick and I was the last kid you'd want with the ball in his hands and the game on the line. 

I also had an incredible knack for falling down at crucial moments in the game.

A couple years ago,  out of college, married with one kid and well into my professional career, I had that middle-of-the-night revelation that all of those little-kid dreams of winning the big game with my favorite team were long gone.

It wasn't sad, or bittersweet, or even shocking. It just was what it was. I was not, and never would be, an athlete. 

In fact, after a number of years in a desk job, I'd begun to resemble the ball much more than the players I wrote about.

It was in January of 2008, though, that I noticed I could no longer make it to the top of the high school gymnasium's bleachers without losing my breath. I was only 27 at the time. I'd gained 60 pounds since leaving college and I knew if something didn't change drastically, it was a trend that would only continue until it was no longer solvable.

So I started wheez, er ... , running.

It was grotesque. I think my first time out I made it about 200 yards. A couple weeks later, I encountered an elderly couple out for an evening walk and, after about a block, realized they were keeping pace with me.

But I kept at it. After a couple months, I set a goal for myself -- to run in an all-comers track meet that summer -- in the hopes that it would keep me committed to running. I started an item in my weekly online column at the paper on my progress and quickly drew a surprising following.

A national running Web site posted one of my entries, which brought a minor flood of e-mails with tips, advice and encouragement.

After about a month of training (on a schedule I created, which might explain the result) I was A) not getting any faster and B) not losing any weight. 

So I greatly changed up my routine, running 5K distances twice a week, subsidizing with exercises around the house and forgetting about the track meet altogether (because, let's face it: I was terrified at the idea of running in front of real, live people). Consequently, I stopped writing the weekly item.

But, by the summer's end, I'd gone from running the 5K in 40 minutes (not joking) to 27:36-- an improvement of nearly 13 minutes. I also lost 30 pounds.

I kept at it over the following year, starting up 2009 where I'd been in July of 2008 and gradually improving to a best of 26:57 before our second child was born and the whole running thing basically went out the window.

That is, until a couple weeks ago. I got the crazy idea in my head that I would run a marathon. Like a real, 26.2-mile marathon. 

I spent a couple days trying to brush it out of my mind, because it really is a crazy idea -- me, the non-athlete, attempting to do what only ultra-athletes have the determination, discipline and stamina to do.

But then I let the idea slip to my wife. And my friends. Then I mentioned it at my office. People got behind the idea and I started thinking there might be just enough time to pull it off.

My plan is two-fold. I'll train for a 10K in June, where I'll have to confront my fear of people watching me wheeze. From there, I'll bump up the training schedule in the following five months before running a marathon in November.

I've been doing some prep work in the past several weeks, doing pushups, squats, lunges, calf raises and crunches around the house and going for 5K runs on Saturdays. 

This past Saturday, with a stuffy nose and Christmas dinner still rolling around in my belly, I managed a 32:13 5K, which isn't impressive, but it is where I was last March, so I haven't fallen back to badly.

I'll keep up with the weekly runs through the freeze in January, run twice a week in February and gradually ramp up my routine until I'm running 21.7 miles a week leading into the June 10K.

I have a goal, which is a little outlandish (the 7-minute mile range), but would put me around a 42- to 44-minute 10K. What's a goal if you don't stand a chance of failing? Besides, I'll be thrilled to just finish the race which, incidentally, would be my only goal for the marathon. Forget time goals, or style points. If I can just put one foot in front of the other long enough to push through, I'll have accomplished what I set out to accomplish. 

I haven't selected a marathon yet, but I'm eyeing the "Run the River Marathon" in Folsom, Calif., which was on Nov. 14 (Saturday) this past year. We'll have to wait to see how it plays out. 

I plan on updating this blog weekly. It'll be some about running, some about my athletic misfortune. My hope is that whoever reads this finds a little laughter, a little encouragement and a little drive to effect a positive change in their lives as well. So check back, and don't let me back out on this. 

Stats for Week 1: Baseline 5KL: 32:13. Baseline 10K: --. Best time of the week: 32.13 (5K). Best overall time: 32:13 (5K), -:-- (10K). Miles within the last week: 3.1. Total miles for 2010: 0.