Bachelorhood ends tonight.  I’ve slowly made the adjustment today with plant watering, pet sitting, vacuuming, dusting, laundry, and dishes.  I even made room in the garage for my wife’s car that has been in airport parking lot for the last 4 days.   I’ve also showered and shaved for tonight’s reunion.  When the alarm goes off tomorrow morning, I’m back to a normal routine, and will actually vacate the house by car for most of the afternoon, as I work in a lunch and happy hour with former co-workers.  The first question they’ll ask me is “how are you enjoying retirement?”  I’ll smile and ask them, “what day is it?”  I think that regardless of age, most people have distant aspirations for retirement.  I hope they are also prepared to face the aches and pains, bladder issues, appearance changes, and other hassles associated with aging.  I feel that I’m an excellent example of something to look forward to, but maybe trying a little to hard to be young again.

A rocking chair is not my thing, but I have nodded off the last couple of days in the afternoon after the longer runs I’ve been doing in preparation for the Hood to Coast relay.  I’m still obsessed with getting up the “hill from hell” and really haven’t made any progress the last couple days of training.  My muscles are tired and strained, but I feel good about the effort.  We have a team meeting next week, and I would like to go for a drive this weekend to check-out my sections of the race.  As a result, the pups may get a trip to the coast or a trip to Timberline Lodge, depending on what direction we decide to go.

When I was training for the Detroit Marathon 38 years ago, I accumulated over 116 miles in one week.  Scared to death that I would fail, I logged every mile in a diary, had a specific time goal, and sometimes ran three times a day.  I’m not that guy anymore!  I’m about 15 pound heavier, at least 4 minutes slower per mile, and all those years older.  I can honestly say that I was seriously addicted to running back then, and it took a series of injuries to get me to stop pushing myself.  I’m still motivated to run every day, but I don’t have that competitive edge that I had back then.  I’m equally scared of this event, but it’s 17.4 miles over two days compared with 26.1 miles in one day.  If I factor in a 50% loss of speed, I’ll actually be running for more hours, almost 3.5 hours as opposed to just over 3 hours for the marathon.

I did not run twice today, and spent some time with my feet up.  I did some reading on the back deck, walked the dogs five times, watched a couple of documentaries, including the HBO series, “The Defiant Ones,” and enjoyed the Cubs vs. White Sox baseball game on ESPN.  The two Chicago teams have one more game tomorrow evening to complete the Cross-Town rivalry series.    We’ll be back at the ballpark in 11 days, as the Cubs face the Giants at AT&T Park in San Francisco.  I’ve been by the park several times, but have never seen a game there.  When I come back home, I’ll be a bachelor again, with my wife back in the Midwest.  I guess we’ll leave our hearts in San Francisco, fly back separately, and reunite 4 days later.  I’ll be really confused on what day it is by then!