Summer of Excitement - Fitness Week - [a case of the summer]

If you remember in my introduction to the Summer of Excitement, one of the criteria was to do something that I've never done before.  And I did this this past week in what I refer to as "Fitness Week."

Why the title?  Well, due to a fairly rainy June and July, we've had a lot of softball games to make up.  So on Monday we were to have a double header, followed by a single game on Wednesday.  And to close out the week, I'd be running my very first 5K on Thursday.  As a guy who doesn't particularly like to exercise and has a genuine disdain for running, this was going to be quite an arduous and challenging task.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure I should tell you that things didn't work out exactly as planned.  Due to -- you guessed it -- rain, our Wednesday night softball game got canceled (however, we did win BOTH of our games on Monday!!)  But that was counteracted by a trip I needed to take to one of our other offices Thursday afternoon, which resulted in me and one other person having to carry two computer monitors, a giant printer, several boxes, miscellaneous other IT equipment and A BOOK CASE from our New Brunswick office to our Morristown office.  That was quite tiring, I tell ya' what.

But the real challenge was the 5K, which I've never done before.  Well, that's not entirely true.  I signed up for this same 5K last year, but actively decided to walk it (and made a great new friend in doing so).  It was for a good charity and a bunch of my work friends were doing it, so I participated more for support than to actually try to run it.  However, when I finally crossed the finish line, they had completely run out of participation medals, which really disappointed me.  Actually, it disappointed me A LOT.  So this year, I decided I would participate again and that I would actually try to run it.  With no prior training whatsoever.

Truthfully, I didn't end up running the entire thing.  There were A LOT of hills and over 4,000 people participating.  Between the inclines, the heat, and the constantly shuffling around people, I did force myself to walk every now and again.  But I legitimately ran the first full mile, and I'd say more than half of the race beyond that point.  And I finished strong.  Most importantly, I GOT MY MEDAL!!!  That's right, I got the one thing I was truly working towards.  And that, in itself, was a proud accomplishment for me.  I do admit, though, that my hips are STILL feeling the pain three days later.

There was one thing that I found curious, though, which is that the event actually got picketed.  That's right -- people were actually staging a strike against this run.  I didn't catch who the group was, but their fight was against Verizon (the event sponsor), starting that the company has excited instances of corporate greed.  The thing is, the race was to benefit a battered women's shelter.  Don't you think there's a more appropriate event to stage this protest?  I mean, urging people not to donate and participate in an event intended to help battered women seems a little low.  Just as important as picking your battles is knowing when and where to have those battles.  Poor judgment, indeed.