daverea.com

Thanks to some persuasion on the part of my co-workers, I decided to run in the JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge this year (as did 9,370 others). The CC is a 3.5-mile road race whose Rochester incarnation happens to be held at my alma mater, RIT.

If you don’t click on the link above for any other reason, please, just do it to see the look on Al Simone’s face!

Last night’s run was good, and my official time was 34:28. Subtract off the 90 seconds or so that we had to stand around after the starting horn, and I’m pretty happy with my time. You’ve got to remember, this is coming from the guy who – through 12 years of grade-school – only once ran the mile without stopping to walk. Just didn’t have the motivation for it…

Since then, I’ve run on-and-off through 5 years at RIT, and more recently 3x a week for the last few months. With summer heat coming (we got a taste of it during Tuesday’s run, when it was 94° and muggy outside) I’ll probably be doing more running on the elipical machine at work, but mostly I’m just happy to be doing it.

I tend to undervalue exercise, but I can’t go without it. I don’t particularly care to feel depressed, and I don’t like ending the day having used grossly fewer calories than I’ve consumed, so I’m trying hard to make it a way of life. No one says you have to run marathons, starve yourself or destroy your knees doing six-minute miles – just stay active, avoid crappy foods and make sure [energy out] is just a shade over [energy in] every day…

The big question now is … will I be able to get out on the mountain bike this weekend?!