Saturday night fever, Sunday morning sweat

Karen's Medal

Saturday was one of those days that just sails along. First we drove up to Carlsbad to get Karen’s bib number and other I.D. for Sunday’s Carlsbad Half-Marathon in which she was entered. Bright, sunny morning, even though rain was forecast. No traffic at the check-in site, though nine thousand people were entered in the thing. We picked up our friend Nataly, who was entered also – she is a veteran of events like this. She showed us a trick to beat the traffic on Sunday morning.

Driving home, we stopped for birthday cards and wine. We were going to a party Saturday night, one of those where couples get together regularly because they like getting together, they laugh a lot, and they’re all good cooks, plus this time two of the guys were celebrating birthdays. The first two cards we looked at were perfect. At the end of the card aisle and around the corner, we ran straight into a shelf on which sat the perfect gifts for these gentlemen. We found two good bottles of Cabernet (beef tenderloin was the entrée) for a combined $11 off, and were out of the store inside of five minutes. At home I didn’t even bother with lunch, preferring to entertain visions of the goodies to come at 6:30.

Can you see where this is heading? I sat down for a short snooze. Thirty minutes later, I woke up feeling weird. The day was still beautiful, but it didn’t much interest me. My appetite was gone. In my head was a tiny, whispering ache that said, “So you thought you were having a good day, did you?” I walked to the back and told Karen, “I don’t feel very good.” She felt my forehead and said, “You feel warm.” We took my temperature. It was right at 100. I would have preferred it to be 101 or 102, the hot, nasty kind that involves pain and toilets. But no, just 100, just enough to poke me in the gut and sneer, “No party for you, Mr. Hot Stuff.”

Karen called and cancelled and went to the store to get me some chicken noodle soup. She called Nataly to ask if they could meet and drive together to Carlsbad, since I probably couldn’t go. It was Karen’s first half-marathon, and I wanted to be there. But when she left at 5:30 a.m. I felt just bad enough to be happy to get on my back again. I hate those fevers that make you feel just bad enough, like, well, it’s not even the flu, you have just been having too much fun lately and now you are going to have to pay.

Karen got home at midday with cramps in her legs and a medal around her neck. She was very happy. “I did it in 3:45,” she said, where she had gone in reckoning on a 4:20. But that was if she walked the whole route. “I jogged part of the way,” she said. "About an hour." After the Breast Cancer 3Day in November, she saw the local half-marathons as good training for next November. She now has the first leg of the San Diego “triple crown” under her belt. Next is the La Jolla Half-Marathon in April, and the San Diego Half-Marathon in August.

“How do you feel?” she asked. “Better,” I said. The temperature was down to 99. This morning, our spring semester classes started at Grossmont. Guess what my temperature was . . . .

Football history is made

If you watched today's Chargers-Steelers game, I am 99.9 percent sure you saw football history, certainly at the NFL level, but I would imagine also the college and high school levels.

In the third quarter of the game, the Chargers ran one play. It was a pass, tipped at the line of scrimmage, and then intercepted by the Steelers.

I am a relative youngster, but I have been watching football games since 1947 or so, and I have never seen anything like that. I was damned impressed when, in the 1955 Texas Class AAAA state high school championship, the Tyler Lions only got off five plays in the first quarter against the Abilene Eagles for a net gain of 11 yards.

Tyler was a great team, undefeated, and I am sure the Lions players remember that first quarter to this day. I don’t doubt the Chargers players, and a number of their fans, will remember the third quarter against Pittsburgh, 2009 playoffs, for a long time. There may not even be a category in the NFL record book for minimum plays run in a quarter. There is now. In San Diego, we'll be talking about this for a long time, even after the Chargers win the 2010 Super Bowl.

There is an interesting twist. Minimum offensive performances typically are categorized in the defense side of the record book. Not this time. The Steelers' offense was totally responsible for this rarity. The best offense is a good defense, the old football saying goes. Not this time. In this record book, it will show the best defense was a good offense.

3Day January report

I was in Vons – our neighborhood supermarket – this morning and at the register Nancy, the cashier on duty, asked me if I had made any New Year's resolutions."I am going to walk in the Breast Cancer 3Day in November," I said. I explained that my late wife, Meredith, had died of breast cancer in 2000, and that my wife, Karen, did the event – 60 miles in three days – this past November and wore Meredith's name, among many others, on her tshirt. I told Nancy I made the mistake of going to the closing ceremony and was so inspired that I decided to make the walk in 2009.

Nancy, who I would judge is in her late 50s, kept scanning groceries. Then she said: "I did the 3Day six years ago. And I am a survivor."

The inspiration just keeps coming. And this one from Nancy felt like a reward. I had come into Von's sweaty from a one-hour walk. For me, however fit I happen to be, the first 15 minutes are always the worst. I always feel like, well, this time, I am so whipped after 14 minutes that the 15th minute without a doubt will be the last minute I ever breathe. Then the glide sets in. Not much of a glide. It just starts to feel like if I breathe hard and regularly, and don't cough or sneeze or do anything else to upset the equilibrium for the next 45 minutes, then I'll finish okay.

But this morning, I crossed a line. I recognized it because in my fitness history I have crossed it many times. I felt a tiny tailwind of reserve. So powerful was this tailwind that I wanted it recorded. And so I begin this report. I begin on Jan. 5 and will file a monthly report up until time for the 3Day, and no doubt I will write about the walk itself if someone will hold my arms up so my fingers can work the keyboard.

I start at 223 pounds (well, hey, it has been the holiday season) by the bedroom scale. I don't know what you weigh, or how you feel, but for New Year's resolutions, you can't beat the 3Day for bang for the buck. It works for weight loss, for fitness, for general health, for well-being, for accomplishment (big-time accomplishment), and for contributing to a cause whose mission is to take down an enemy that kills 44,000 American women a year and attacks 185,000 more. If breast cancer were a foreign nation, Congress would have declared war a long time ago.

The road to the 3Day

This morning I took what I consider my first training walk in preparation for next November's Breast Cancer 3Day walk in San Diego. I can't believe I am doing this. I should never have gone to the closing ceremony of this year's walk, even if Karen was in it. Sixty miles in three days. The Germans have a phrase for people like me: "Ich, Narr." It means, "I Fool," or, "You Effing Idiot," or, "Inspire THIS!" I believe I will put "Ich, Narr" on my walk tshirt next November.

When I walk, I am two countries, North Michael and South Michael. The two are separated by the thin nation of Titania. Titania used to be Arthritica, until Arthritica fell to a physicians' coup. You can see it clearly in xrays: titanium hip joints, like gigantic, deformed golf tees, and those chicken scratches between them are some kind of interior metal stitching where they took my prostate cancer out. This maturity business has its hazards, I tell you.

So North Michael is sort of teed up on Titania, and when he leans forward South Michael sort of follows along by dint of the long shafts of the titanium tees rammed halfway down my thigh bones. Missing is the old sense of natural attachment between North and South, but I don't miss it that much, because Arthritica was a dictatorship of pain and evil sadists wielding bone spurs.

Walking doesn't hurt now, which makes a big difference in miles per gallon. I walked for 50 minutes this morning. Yeah, I know. But it's the first day. I don't know how many miles, but this morning I decided not to measure that way. There's no way I will ever be able to walk 20 miles in one day. I am training to walk seven or eight hours in one day.

The farthest I have ever walked at one time was probably eight miles. When I was in college, I was a summer substitute mailman. It turned out to be a great job – second-best job I ever had – but I almost didn't survive the first day. I carried the route in penny loafers because my mailman shoes hadn't come yet. It was June in West Texas, and the route was mean, dusty and long. By noon I was as done as a rest-home ribeye.

I stumbled into the first blocks of the afternoon leg. Three blocks along, a screen door slammed two houses behind me and the resident yelled: "Hey! This isn't my mail! This is Peach Street!" I looked at the letters in my hand. All for Palm Street. One block over.

So I have experienced walking survival. Why I undertake it again, Ich Narr, I do not know. So far, I am walking for my late wife Meredith, for prostate brother Mike Bryant, for Peggy Odam, battling breast cancer in Houston, and for Karen, who this morning walked twice as far as I did in 50 minutes. Did I say I have to raise $2,700 in donations?