Run a Mile Day

Tuesday was National Run a Mile Day! Sorry I didn't tell you about it in advance, but I didn't know, either. On May 6th, 1954, Dr. Roger Bannister became the first person to run a mile under the 4-minute mark, and so everyone is encouraged to run a mile on each anniversay.

So that's what I did. I ran a mile.

Well, not all at once. Tuesday is the day that my brother and I do our "sprint" workouts, and a whole mile is a tad too long to be considered a sprint. So we broke it up.

We try to meet once a week on a local high school track for some sort of short, fast running on the clock. We each also try to work on our form (though his form work consists of trying to hold his body in a position of maximum efficiency and stride effectiveness, while my form work consists of trying not to be mistaken for Herman Munster and attacked by locals with pitchforks.)

After warmup, I ran a hard 3/4 mile, followed by a cooldown and then a hard half mile. That totals more than one, so in your face, Bannister! (Of course, my 1/2 mile was pretty close to his 1-mile time, so even though I went further in total, he may still retain the bragging rights. He could probably run backwards and still lap me. Sigh.)

I was pretty happy with my times, and other than having some minor knee and form problems running up onto the concrete in an effort to avoid the mud puddles on the track, felt pretty decent, too. Of course, that was only when doing the longer distances -- when Pat talked me into doing a couple of 100-yard dashes, my knee was saying things like "You're not a sprinter!", "Stick to swimming, you pinhead!", and "OW!".

So I says to my knee, "Knee", I says, "You just deal with it. I promise I'll soak you in epsom salts when I get home, so be quiet and cooperate." And somehow, we got through it, and even added a fairly fast 200 on the end of the workout. I was close to two miles total by the time I finished, so I guess I did a mile for one of you, too. And everybody's happy, right? (You can thank me later. Or not.)

After the running comes the baseball toss. Following the last few sessions, Pat and I have played a bit of catch to allow our rusty arms to get in shape for the summer ball-throwing season. Pat usually plays on a softball team in the summer, while I enjoy nothing more than the occasional fungo session. (If you want to hear about when I was more deeply involved in bat-based sports, read about our attempt to break the home run record.) Whatever our individual goals, with warm weather and long days just around the corner, we figured it wouldn't hurt start limbering up the ol' shoulder cannons.

Note to self: If you ever hear yourself saying that something "wouldn't hurt", please examine the premise carefully.

Pat throws hard, and I can't catch stuff that's coming fast -- so there were a few balls that motored into the backstop behind me. No worries...that's what backstops are for. But as he usually does, Pat began to back farther and farther away from me in order to allow for longer throws. And even at the distance where he stopped moving, I was surprised to find that I could still get most of my throws all the way to him in the air. Yes, there was a twinge or two in my right forearm as I released the ball, but I didn't worry about it.

"OK, last few," he said and lobbed me a fly ball. I decided to throw one as high as I could, so that he could practice navigating underneath a sky-high popup. Bad idea.

Here's the thing, though. I'm writing this on Wednesday, which is the day of the Great American Grump Out -- the one day of the year when you're supposed to avoid any whining, complaining, or moaning about sharp pains in the forearm, so I'm going to leave it to your imagination to determine what happened on my final throw. I'll also refrain from any mention of my one-armed swimming at our Masters Team workout this morning. And you can rest assured that on Grump Out Day, I will not say anything about how somebody who spends all day at a computer keyboard should probably not make the mistake of thinking he can do the same things as a major league outfielder.

So, with that in mind, keep smiling. And have a great day!