Ok, I’m confused. It’s not a difficult state in which to place me, and usually, I can battle my way out of the haze of confusion quite easily. But this just blows my mind.

Let’s say you have a food product – a pack of Trident chewing gum, for example – and that food product has an expiration date on it. This is a date which, by all rights, one is to assume this food is good until. Well, what does it mean when that date is written:

1191004013

What day is that? How am I supposed to interpret that? What is it, a star date? Is it good until NASA launches their mission to seek out strange new worlds and boldy go where no man has gone before? Oh well… gum is meant to be chewed and enjoyed, not pondered over.

Today was not the most delightful day ever. Work was busy, activities after work were even busier. I’m exhausted. Yep, I’m still off the coffee. I feel like I’m on about day 10 million of my caffeine withdrawal. The headaches just don’t want to go away. But, I’ve made it before, and I can make it again.

I need to make it, if I plan to start running and getting back into shape. Would you believe that I’ve gained 15 pounds in the last two years? Yeah, me, skinny old Dustin. I maintained the same weight from about age 15 until I was 20, now all the sudden I gained 15 extra pounds. I’ve always been in the “normal” weight bracket for my height, now I’m a little closer to the middle of that “normal” bracket.

I’ve been planning my running schedule which I plan to begin within the coming days. The plan is to start running about a mile a night 4 nights a week (including weekends) for the next month or so. Then, I’ll transition into a full-on 20+ miles per week routine in late April/early May. One of the sales reps at work also runs, and wants to go running together after work once it starts getting nice out. It’ll be great to have someone to run with again. There’s something great and peaceful about running on your own, but I tend to push myself a lot more when I’m running with other people.

I can’t wait to be in good shape again. It’s a great feeling. There was a time back when I was in cross country that one of our practice workouts was to run “repeat miles.” We’d run a mile as hard as we could, then take a 10-15 minute break, then run another mile as hard as we could, then take a 10-15 minute break, and over and over and so on. We’d run about 10 repeat miles as hard as we could and as consistent as possible. Proudly, never did I slow down at the end, I managed to pull pretty consistent and fast times. Not because I wasn’t pushing myself hard enough, but because I knew how to conserve my energy while exerting as much as I could. That was a great feeling to be able to do that. A lot of people can hardly even walk one mile without losing their breath.

Well, now I’m off to go and finish out this Wednesday on a high note by eating food from one of my favorite restaurants (Chipotle) and watching my favorite food guy (Alton). Be sure to watch those expiration dates, people. See you next time.