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Days to Marathon: 151
Weight: 182.6
Body Fat: 21.5%
Total Kms Thus Far: 0
Best 1 km time: shut up.
Kms Today: 0
Average Pace: Torpid
Cheese o' The Week: Stilton. Not to be confused with Danish Blue, Stilton is a creamy English gift that can only be legally made in six dairies on Earth (none of which are in Stilton, BTW). The dairies are subject to surprise audits by an independent inspection agency. I’m led to believe that the penalty for quality infractions involves force-feeding of Kraft processed cheese slices. Good with port and, bizarrely, celery.
Well, I made a cardinal mistake last week. Ignoring my better instincts, I succumbed to peer pressure and got a flu shot for the first time in my life. Naturally, I immediately became phlegm-tastically, cough-er-ifically, I’d-prefer-if-you-slept-in-the-other-room, sick. Having not had the flu in six years, I find the timing unsettlingly coincidental and am forced to conclude that my previous blogs regarding the political sniping within the US Center for Disease Control did not go unnoticed or, it appears, unpunished.
So, I have done little in the last five days but wheeze, make bull-walrus-like barking sounds, and be generally cantankerous. With the current lung capacity of an asthmatic, chain-smoking guinea pig, running was about as likely as Barack Obama sweeping a landslide victory in Arkansas. Silver-lining: I haven’t had a drop of alcohol in a week and I’m making a point of staying hydrated. Also, my ab (for now, I just have the one) is sore from bouts of coughing so violent that I was walking around for a while with my lung hanging from my mouth like a deflated meat-balloon. I reckon that’s the equivalent of several hundred crunches.
So, since physical exertion wasn’t in the cards, I focused on marathon research...
HISTORY
As it turns out, the genesis of the modern marathon is a legend about a Greek named Pheidippides, a soldier at the battle of Marathon where a few hundred Greeks triumphed over thousands of Persians in 490 BC. Unconfirmed reports suggest that Pheidippides – referred to not-so-affectionately as “Dippie” by his comrades – was a young recruit and not a stranger to practical jokes. Well, apparently Dippie had irritated his superiors enough to be selected for the dubious duty of running all the way from Marathon to Athens to tell the Senate that the Persians had been defeated. There were plenty of horses around, mind you, but, the commander explained, they were “tired”.
“See how fast you can do it,” he said. “I’ll time you - go!”
I am also reasonably sure that his sandals did not have thermoplastic arch shanks.
Evidently, Dippie ran the entire distance, burst into the Athenian senate and declared “Masters, victory is ours!” before collapsing and dying on the spot in a fluttering shower of PowerBar wrappers and nipple-tape.
The senators had no idea who he was.
However, the news of the war sparked a raging debate between those senators who thought they should celebrate the victory, and those who thought the killing of the Persians was a war crime being perpetrated by the olive oil companies and that they should oppose the war but ‘support the troops’. Ultimately, the political rifts created by the debate over what color ribbon should be used to demonstrate solidarity would lead to the fracturing of the senate and the fall of the Greek empire.
True story.
BIOLOGY
Oh, and here’s an interesting little piece of science:
Runners use glycogen to fuel their muscles during the race.
The human body can store about 8 MJ worth of glycogen, which is enough to run 19 miles.
The marathon is 26.1 miles.
You do the math.
Weight: 182.6
Body Fat: 21.5%
Total Kms Thus Far: 0
Best 1 km time: shut up.
Kms Today: 0
Average Pace: Torpid
Cheese o' The Week: Stilton. Not to be confused with Danish Blue, Stilton is a creamy English gift that can only be legally made in six dairies on Earth (none of which are in Stilton, BTW). The dairies are subject to surprise audits by an independent inspection agency. I’m led to believe that the penalty for quality infractions involves force-feeding of Kraft processed cheese slices. Good with port and, bizarrely, celery.
Well, I made a cardinal mistake last week. Ignoring my better instincts, I succumbed to peer pressure and got a flu shot for the first time in my life. Naturally, I immediately became phlegm-tastically, cough-er-ifically, I’d-prefer-if-you-slept-in-the-other-room, sick. Having not had the flu in six years, I find the timing unsettlingly coincidental and am forced to conclude that my previous blogs regarding the political sniping within the US Center for Disease Control did not go unnoticed or, it appears, unpunished.
So, I have done little in the last five days but wheeze, make bull-walrus-like barking sounds, and be generally cantankerous. With the current lung capacity of an asthmatic, chain-smoking guinea pig, running was about as likely as Barack Obama sweeping a landslide victory in Arkansas. Silver-lining: I haven’t had a drop of alcohol in a week and I’m making a point of staying hydrated. Also, my ab (for now, I just have the one) is sore from bouts of coughing so violent that I was walking around for a while with my lung hanging from my mouth like a deflated meat-balloon. I reckon that’s the equivalent of several hundred crunches.
So, since physical exertion wasn’t in the cards, I focused on marathon research...
HISTORY
As it turns out, the genesis of the modern marathon is a legend about a Greek named Pheidippides, a soldier at the battle of Marathon where a few hundred Greeks triumphed over thousands of Persians in 490 BC. Unconfirmed reports suggest that Pheidippides – referred to not-so-affectionately as “Dippie” by his comrades – was a young recruit and not a stranger to practical jokes. Well, apparently Dippie had irritated his superiors enough to be selected for the dubious duty of running all the way from Marathon to Athens to tell the Senate that the Persians had been defeated. There were plenty of horses around, mind you, but, the commander explained, they were “tired”.
“See how fast you can do it,” he said. “I’ll time you - go!”
I am also reasonably sure that his sandals did not have thermoplastic arch shanks.
Evidently, Dippie ran the entire distance, burst into the Athenian senate and declared “Masters, victory is ours!” before collapsing and dying on the spot in a fluttering shower of PowerBar wrappers and nipple-tape.
The senators had no idea who he was.
However, the news of the war sparked a raging debate between those senators who thought they should celebrate the victory, and those who thought the killing of the Persians was a war crime being perpetrated by the olive oil companies and that they should oppose the war but ‘support the troops’. Ultimately, the political rifts created by the debate over what color ribbon should be used to demonstrate solidarity would lead to the fracturing of the senate and the fall of the Greek empire.
True story.
BIOLOGY
Oh, and here’s an interesting little piece of science:
Runners use glycogen to fuel their muscles during the race.
The human body can store about 8 MJ worth of glycogen, which is enough to run 19 miles.
The marathon is 26.1 miles.
You do the math.
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