"Run" for life !!

I have recently started "conditioning" my body for making the 10mile broad street run in Philly on May 1st ,the same weekend a friend of mine living there is getting married and hence used the brilliant logic of hitting 2 birds in one shot funda. Years of lethargy and non-existent stamina and warming up my couch is not making the practice any easier. I think my astrological stars were in retrograde when I made that decision. Dang!!!... how did I miss my daily astrology.com predictions on that day.

Anyway looking for some inspiring company I hooked up with this colleague, Phil, who also happens to be a trainer much earlier in his career. The first time I ran was the day I wished I had rather me run over by the passing truck or at least have my colleague got run over so that in both cases I could stop. Unfortunately nothing of that sort happened and I had to come with different strategies to deal with the situation. He was very persistent, and would send me mails about how I did on the previous day and some graphs about the number of breaks I took which were more than the number of total steps in the run.

So the next time he would call or email for scheduling a run, I was prepared with excuses...err!! I meant respnses.

" My cat died today..can't make it"
" My cat ate my car keys before dying, oh! yeah! that’s why it died , cant make it"
" There is a new starbucks coffee house now on the place where I buried my cat. Would you join for coffee instead"

After I ran out of excuses I had no other choice but run (frankly it was hard on my brain thinking about excuses than the run itself). I panted, puffed, screamed and that was easily the worst pain I had ever put my body through. Phil , noticing this, would ease me up with some humor. He would take a dig saying " Hey, what's with you. I told you to quit smoking and stop beating your girl friend..else it would be hard". I would try to match his wits " I did, I did quit both. But she hasn't!! " :)

While I would bask in the glory of my humor , the talk would divert my attention from the pain of making that extra mile. Nice strategy. Phil persistence paid as I now can run 6miles straight. There are 3 weeks to go and I am already trying to have a back up plan of cutting short the run from 10 to 6miles by looking up the map of Philly and finding shortcuts to the finish line. You never know my girl friend might switch to Cigars and a leather belt:)