Building Cathedrals
On November 23, in the Year of our Lord 2008, all the Builders within a 300 mile radius will converge on Red’s beloved city of Philadelphia… Red, B-mama and me to run the Philadelphia Marathon’s 8K race, and MaryAlice to sport a sassy late-pregnancy workout get-up and lipstick, pose for pictures, and cheer on her half-marathoning husband.
Yes. We’re paying a $45 registration fee to run 8 kilometers at 7:15am on a cold November morning around a mediocre city:
(1) To tone our child-laden bodies.
(2) To engage in the type of competitive trash talk that we all enjoyed at one time during athletic careers but have long suppressed in order to be good models for our children. Red and B-mama both were star college athletes. I had some high school glory days and am generally competitive.
(3) To head into the Thanksgiving holiday—which often marks the beginning of the end of healthy habits for the winter—with a solid fitness regimen in place.
This is a competition. This is not a girlfriends’ trot where we jog three-abreast and dish about fertility cycles and parenting philosophies. There will be a winner.
B-mama is back up and at ’em after baby J’s birth two months ago, with an eye toward returning to her usual 5+ workouts per week. She’s the college-level distance runner among us. She’s the rabbit, we’re the greyhounds.
I am opting for the 6 times per week elliptical training program while I nurse some minor back problems, although I run 4-5 miles outside occasionally. Core strengthening and speed will be my goals. Red also tells me there’s prize money for coming in first place city-wide. What’s wrong with dreaming big?
We will be documenting our progress for the next seven weeks, on Thursday of each week, in a segment entitled Tone, Trash Talk and Thanksgiving Turkey.
We invite one and all to join us in Philadelphia or to show solidarity by setting some pre-winter fitness goals.
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