My Inner Athlete

I love the summer Olympics. I like to watch all the track and running, and dream of the day when I will run a marathon and live to tell about it. I’ve been wanting to train and run a full marathon for a couple of years now, and have managed to walk a few half marathons and a ton of 5ks, but my real dream is that 26.2 miles of sheer physical abuse, that elusive goal that seems so far off, and at my age, getting further and further away from the finish line by the minute.

I have never been athletic. As a kid I was always reading and writing and exploring outside. The only exercise I got was occasional hikes up Bear Mountain or running around outside in the big yard at my grandparents in Connecticut or walking to the candy store at the end of our humungously long street with my friends.  OK, so I wasn’t a couch potato, that came later when I became a full time employed person sitting at a desk, and then a full time writer sitting at a desk.

I don’t sit on the couch much. It is usually covered in cat hair and I am too lazy to clean it every day. Mostly an office chair. But I still plan to train and do that marathon. I went for a short walk the other day with my kid, and we were walking down a dirt path through the leaves and I felt oh so athletic out there hiking down that grade, well, really it was just a small hill leading to the street, but I could feel and hear the leaves crunching under my sneakers, until I realized it was my knees.

They still kinda hurt.

I think some of us are born athletic, and others are born cerebral and imaginative and destined to spend far more time sitting and creating than out hiking, skydiving, surfing, running or kickboxing. I am the latter, most definitely. If I had to choose between sitting and exercising, for heaven’s sakes, what the hell do you think I’d choose?

I do like weight lifting and enjoyed going to my gym for awhile, and I love walking for miles and even attempting to run part of them. I will do that marathon. I will. I really want to know before I drop dead what this body is capable of, other than digesting food and fetching the mail.

But for now, I’ll just sit and think and write about it, and wait for the Olympics. I have a TV in my office. I can watch from my chair.

Sitting.