Happy Anniversary to Me

I did it! I did it! I did it!

Hell, I more than did it. I rocked it.

In case you missed what it is, Gentle Reader, I threw out the possibility back in mid-September about honoring my one-year anniversary of running from the hellhole in which I grew up to the hellhole where I attended school, worked for a summer or two and was the hub of the major activities of my life from roughly age 4 until age 18 1/2. Being the overachiever that I am, I made plans to do and then, surprise surprise, followed through on my plans.

And then I ran. And then I ran a little bit more until I hit lucky 13.

Yes, Gentle Reader. That's 13 miles. As in a half-marathon. Which means I actually ran further than my initial plans to just go from my 'rents' house to the city limits of the second hellhole. But I was feeling so damn good--a way I haven't felt while running in a while, thanks in part, I think, to the asthma--that I didn't want to stop. Didn't matter that running through town meant I had no shoulder so as to avoid the traffic. Didn't matter that I couldn't feel my quads not long after I told my 'rent, who were kindly leading me (not following) in Mum's car, that I'd see them at the high school and then, finally, at the church I attended as a kid (where my 'rents still attend Mass faithfully).

Didn't matter that I had to zigzag around the neighborhood around the church to get me to 13 miles. Didn't matter that I actually ran 13.25 miles because the dead pixels on the display of my Nike sportsband made it difficult to see that I was closer to 13 miles than I thought, thus I overshot by a quarter-mile.

Like I said, I did it. I rocked it. And I am a deplorable overachiever.

Oh, and I also got to cook supper for my 'rents. They enjoyed the Moroccan chicken and dates with cinnamon tagine dish and orange couscous. I got to show off some of my mad knife skills, and I got to put my newly arrived Microplane zester--the one I was to get as a free gift for previewing the Cook's Illustrated 2007 annual volume back in May that just now arrived because the sucker was on backorder for that long--to the test. The zester rocks and was well worth the wait. I can't wait to zest some more stuff.

Here are some action shots of me celebrating one year of running. Unless you happen to be familiar with Bumblefuck and the area, they may not mean much. But, hey, I thought I'd share. Mad props to Mum and Dad for taking these for me.

In a fabulously memorable moment of serendipity, the local fly-in was held Saturday morning, so as I was heading into town, five planes flying in a nice delta formation were releasing white plumes of smoke, streaking the clear blue sky ahead of me as I jogged on and on and on. Not a shabby way to mark an anniversary, eh, Gentle Reader?

If you're curious how long it took me to put in those 13.25 miles, my sportsband tells me I was at it one hour, 50 minutes and 48 seconds. I'd warned the 'rents that I was figuring about two hours to get from home to the city limits, so I wasn't too far off. Yeah, that's not the fastest pace ever, but I wasn't doing this to be fast. I was doing it because I could. And I did. I did.