We're all going somewhere, it's just a matter of time,
You can only go as fast as the fat guy you're behind …
Children shouldn’t be allowed to take part in Fun Runs - they're small, they get in the way and it's embarrassing when they overtake you. A similar thing happened when I first took up cycling. It seemed I was being passed by every kid out riding their bike to school. Even the ones that still had training wheels… In my defence, I did pass about 25 kids in the Auckland Round the Bays run yesterday. Many of them were being pushed in prams by their parents, but the fact remains that they were officially competing and I Totally Kicked Their Ass. The run was 8.4km. That converts to 112.4 miles for those users of the Imperial measurement system.  Fun Run. What a joke. That has to be the most oxymoronic oxymoron* in the entire English language.
I hate running. And I hate people. And I hate running with people. Especially 70,000-plus of them. And the funny thing is … nothing even remotely funny happened at all! I didn’t laugh once. Fun Run, my ass...
I figured it would be an easy run. But it’s always easy to think things will be easy, until you actually do them and discover that they are actually not that easy, that, in fact, they are quite hard, actually. I had to shuffle mosh-pit style for about 10 minutes after the starter’s gun went before I got over the official starting line. I spent the next 3km dodging prams, walkers, cyclists and Men In Tutus Wheeling Kegs in order to actually run at a steady pace. I figured I was almost at the end, when an official called out “Congratulations, you’re at the half way mark!”. Gee. Zus. I don’t normally need water for running that distance. But I started getting that pounding in my ears that indicated I hadn’t factored in that running during the heat of a hot day is very different from getting up at 6:15am and running before the sun has even risen. Either that, or it meant I was suffering a heart attack. Dehydrated and delirious, I kept saying to myself, Don’t worry, just as long as you don’t stop …keep running … keep running … it’s all good, it's all good.... And the next bloody thing I know, I’ve stopped running. I look down at my legs and go “Hello? What do you bastards think you’re trying to do to me? Get moving!”. And my legs just stared back, then flipped me The Finger. Because they have no respect for authority. Then my father-in-law passed me. He's 106-years-old, has a wooden leg and uses a Zimmer frame.
That was enough to spur me back into action, but he was already disappearing into the distance. Old people shouldn’t be allowed to run, either. I finished in an OK time. But I’d like to offer these excuses reasons as to why I didn't do better: - It was a very hot day
- Swallowing petrol has probably scarred my lungs, thus reducing my aerobic capacity
- I’d spent the day prior hydrating my body with wine (enjoy the honeymoon, H&D!)
- I came down with something resembling food poisoning a couple of days earlier (Mental Note To Self: Wife may be slipping arsenic into food again...)
- Every child, geriatric and grossly overweight person that overtook me was clearly on steroids
Why do we even bother exercising? To stay in shape?
In the 1980s, scientists discovered that everyone could be slim and healthy if they took just two pills a day. But no one knows what those two pills contained, because Big Business stepped in and bought up all the research and development rights. Then the scientists mysteriously disappeared. It is believed that their invention is sitting on a shelf somewhere, alongside all the hydrogen-powered cars that the oil companies don’t want you to have.Why? If we were all slim and healthy, we would be happier. Just think of how much time you waste worrying about whether your Ass Looks Big In That. Magic slimming pills are bad business for a lot of people, including: - The diet industry
- The infomercial industry
- Fitness Centres
- Shrinks
- The inventors of the Yo Mama's So Fat jokes
Just imagine what we could achieve if our minds were freed from the worries of fat rolls to ponder other things. Like building Ewok villages. And the best way to Photoshop co-workers’ heads onto donkey bodies.
Two people who are too busy working out and building themselves six packs the hard way to contemplate silly things like Ewok villages are Jeffrey and Lisa over at Body4life. The site was meant to be dedicated to their "very own little club of '30somethings' who have all been close friends since high school who all realized it's time to make the decision to focus on our mental and physical health before we wake up older, fatter and in more of a pre-midlife panic than we already are."Jeffrey and Lisa were brave enough to post "before" pics of themselves, and they should be just about due for an update. It seems that their other friends have chickened out though. I won’t be posting any pics of myself, either. Because once you all see what a toned, six-packed machine I am, it will make the fact that I get beaten by kids all the more Path-eh-tic.
* Oxymoron: A figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction.
I put the 'moron' in 'oxymoron'…
Oxymormon: When you go around to a Mormon's house and knock on THEIR door...
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