One. Hundred. Thousand.

Thursday, November 6, 2008
Meters: 6,282
Time: 30:00
Strokes per minute: 24-25
Total Meters Rowed: 105,576

One-hundred-thousand meters plus! Though I should probably include … finally! Why did I think, when I got started back in September, that these Total Meters Rowed were going to glide past almost too quickly to count? Because herein lies the dirty little secret of staying in shape.

IT IS HARD WORK! IT TAKES TIME! YOU HAVE TO WANT TO DO IT! IT ISN’T REALLY EXACTLY TOTALLY COMPLETELY AND SOMETIMES EVEN REMOTELY A WHOLE LOT OF FUN.

I mean it IS fun, but it also ISN’T. The fun isn’t in the doing, it’s in the being done. And knowing you won’t have to do it again for 48 hours. That’s THREE days from now, the way I count. Today is Thursday. Tomorrow is Friday. The next day is Saturday. I won’t be working out until then — THREE days from now. It is important to play these little mind games. Crucial, really.  (Especially when you have a little mind!) But yes, all these years of staying in shape, once my knees told me to stop running every day and I went to an every-other-day routine, this one-day-on/three-days-off(!) math trickery thing I do has been key to my having stayed with it.

Of course in the short term of the right now, it also doesn’t hurt my immediate mental outlook that in the real world I likely won’t get another row in until Sunday. Tomorrow I head to Bucks County Community College, north of Philadelphia, to do my schtick in a pair of writing classes and then read from the book at BC3′s Wordsmith Reading Series. Liz Luciano, a language and literature instructor and the wife of Paul Lupiciano, a former work colleague, is doing the arranging.  I’m staying overnight and then it’s back to York early for a  fun Run at York cAthcolic High School by 9 a.m. Somertimes you can just see how your life unfolding right before your very eyes!

One more thing, and I admit it kinda-sorta puts the lie to the whole not-so-fun thing. Today maybe it was. I did somewthing I rarely rarely rarely ever do. I added time to the row during the row. Somewhere around 23 minutes I decided not to stop at 25 minutes but to push it to 30. Why? No idea. Just did. And if felt great.