Uh oh. Time to get serious

Bill Shakespeare wrote: "To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream". I woke this morning with a similar thought cadence: "To laugh, to cry; To cry: perchance to get outside and start running".

The Jupiter Peak Steeplechase is less than eight weeks away. It's 16 miles of running, up 3,000 feet of vertical and back down. Up is fatiguing. Down is punishing. Anyone with any good sense would be running about 40 miles a week now and starting to do some serious hill climbs. The only good news for me is that "four-tee" and "four-teen" sound pretty similar, so I can say that I am close.

I went back and looked at my exercise log. I have been quite busy over the past two months. Unfortunately, busy mostly means traveling, rowing, CrossFit, hiking, and some stationary biking. I have lots of great excuses for not running: snow, cold, more snow, lots of travel, and of course, even more snow. Excuses don't propel you up the mountainside. My conditioning plan now requires some form of Papal miracle, which is unlikely since I am not Catholic or even religious.

At least I woke up motivated. Perhaps better late than never? I am still packing most of my winter's hibernation fat. Isn't that supposed to come off during the winter instead of increasing? Works for bears, but I guess they stop eating and drinking, and that just isn't going to happen. I would love to drop 10 pounds before the race. Mostly I am just lazy and can't imagine running 16 miles with a 10 pound dumbbell, especially a jiggly one.

Our travels are complete for a few months. The snow has stopped (mostly, perhaps...). No more damn excuses. I need to get back to what worked for my marathon training, a weekly mix of distance, speed, hills and less couch time.

We shall see. This morning I slogged 7 miles and walked 2 more.