The Dinghy has managed to obtain an exclusive update on the marathon training of a sedentary plane/office/airport/apartment dwelling Homosapien. As previously stated on The Dinghy the goal of this said individual is to complete the Redwoods Marathon in California on October 16, 2005 and the NYC Marathon on November 6, 2005. With the NYC Marathon still a few months away this poses no problem for our procrastinating subject, the Redwoods marathon is a completely different story with only 7 weeks remaining it is getting close to the fish or cut bait (read: chicken out) date.

With 13 days since having completed a run that could be considered long enough to be a training run the prognosis for success was looking grim. A half marathon was completed in July with little struggle, although the pace of the half marathon was fairly relaxed and not a pace that is likely going to work for a full marathon, other than that the training has been very very informal. Today our subject decided to perform a small test to gauge the overall fitness level and ability to possibly complete this said Redwoods Marathon. The test, head over to central park and run 20 - 30 K, likely 25ish.

Preparation is the days leading up this test were taken from the unorthodox bin, down aisle 3 just before the Dumb Sticks and the Not So Smart sauce. Our subject preceded this run with a couple of nights of several Malt beverages and wake-athons till 4 am each of the nights. (Our subject was busy solving the worlds problems at these early hours of the morning, making the world a better place). The dietary component was also sporadic, and with no regard for caloric or type of intake. After discussions with many experts the prevailing thoughts postulated were that our subject had intentionally given his body a little extra challenge to make the upcoming test more difficult. None of the experts seemed to agree with this approach however.

On the test day, our subject started the day with 4 pieced of toast, extra butter please; 2 sunny side up eggs, 2 glasses of OJ and 1 cup of water. The temperature at the beginning of this test was in the range of 27-29 degrees Celsius as the experiment was scheduled to happen in the hottest part of the day.

As one addition small nuisance for our subject, the running shoes which were supposed to be in the closet… were not. This is normal as our subject likes to have articles of clothing an apparel in as many locations as possible, and while there is confirmed ownership of more than 6 pairs of running shoes, none are in NYC and the missing pair are in New Jersey. Our subject does have a pair of trail runners, which are not great for even that, but they will be the cherry on top for the experiment.

On the walk to the park our subject quietly decided without telling the rest of his brain that the run should be 30K or 3 hours, which ever comes first. If 30K are finished in 3 hours or less (not likely) then the subject will “fish”, if our Homosapien is not able to make it 3 hours, or falls significant short on distance a very serious review will need to take place and the subject will like cut bait and just run the half marathon at Redwoods; i.e. chicken out.

Running in Central Park on a weekend is quite a pleasant experience, except for folks who shop down aisle 3. As our fine readers can image there are several hundred, possibly thousands running all running at different paces, with starting and finishing points. There are no problems for our subject when someone is way faster or way slower, the problem starts with runners who might be just a bit faster or about the same, then what happens is that the testosterone hormone starts to be released and the pace of a 30 km run gets out of whack. Out poor subject unfortunately got caught in these mini-games and held a very formidable pace for the first 10K. The pace if extended for the full 42 Km’s of a marathon it would have clocked in a bit under 3 hours and 20 minutes (way faster than our runner could ever complete a marathon, especially without training). Out subject would pay for this indiscretion, the second loop (each loop around the park is 10K) would be 15% slower and the third loop would be another 15% slower than the second.

Our subject completed a little more than 30K in just under 3 hours, so the experiment at face value was a success. There have been some unconfirmed reports into The Dinghy that our subject is currently in a non-mobile state with some fairly uncomfortable chaffing, legs that no longer seem to move naturally, and a couple of sort feet. The Dinghy was able to get one brief comment out of the subject “That wasn’t very smart.”

Our people on the ground have also unearthed that our subject is scheduled to be on a plane at 7am the next morning to Denver and has plans to “Bag a peak” in Colorado that day. Odds makers aren’t sure what to make of predicting the success of failure of this planned event.