Blame It On Daylight Savings Time ... I Am

Nov. 8, 2012 --

Today I'm 188.0 pounds of rolling thunder.

I'm blaming it on Daylight Saving Time. Or maybe it was the presidential election. Whatever it is, something has thrown me off my regular blogging schedule.

Sloth -- never! Procrastination -- fat chance.

Regardless of my writing frequency, rest assured that I've been out pounding the pavement. I would be the one moving just a step ahead of continental drift. 

Even though the temperatures have been up and down, this has been a generally good fall for running. I think the only days I've missed have been of my own making and not Mother Nature's.

The one thing I hadn't done in a while was pulling on those God-forsaken ankle weights and trudged around with them strapped to my legs for an hour or more.

Well, that all ended on Wednesday -- which happened to be my long-run day. So true to form, I strapped them on, pulled the Velcro up tight and trudged out the door feeling rather heavy.

Now I've been running with my wrist weights all this time, so added weight really isn't a huge issue. Oh, who am I kidding, going from 2-3 pounds on my arms to 5 pounds per leg is a big deal, and when I trudge up those really steep hills, there is a sense of accomplishment.

Yesterday was a great day for a run. I got out on the road in reasonable time and started making it around my normal loop. Go too early and you hit the high schoolers with their rolling eyes and whose-dad-is-that stares. Go too late, and you fight your way through flocks of middle schoolers who travel in gaggles and giggles and are far too self-absorbed to make way for the chunky guy with funny looking weights strapped to his ankles.

I usually catch one of the groups on my late-afternoon jaunts. During cross country season, even the slowest kid would put on the jets so as not to be beaten up the hill by the world's slowest human.

That's OK, at least I could push them a little bit. But now the season is long over, and on cool days only the hardcore runners are out on the street, so there's little hope of me passing anyone and a surety that I will get passed -- by a kid, a dog or a kid with a dog.

Today looks like another great day to hit the streets. So I'm blogging early in the hope that my car will be fixed and I can turn picking it up into my daily run. Now that would be the stars aligning, wouldn't it?

So as usual, if you see the world's slowest human out there running, give me a wave.