why i will likely be giving thanks and feeling like i am about to die at the same time

In comments on a recent post, it was suggested to me that I should embark on writing a mystery novel and running a marathon. I countered that maybe I could write half a mystery novel and run half a marathon, especially if I could find someone else to write the other half of the novel and run the other half of the marathon. While no progress has been made on the Man Who Would Be Ellery Queen front, there just so happened to be a couple of people interested in doing a half marathon with me. Two people, two halves, one might think I could just get them to do it and stay home eating marzipan. Alas, instead, I went to sign up for an invigorating little jaunt in Atlanta on Thanksgiving day:



After a deep breath, I did indeed press "Continue", and entered all my information until:



Anyway, I'll admit to being very curious about how this is going to go. If you have a corpuscle of compassion, you should be rooting for me. I mean, a year ago at this time I had felt like I had become this incorrigibly supersized fleshtub of goo, more narwhal than man, this body that had turned itself into a superfund site and couldn't manage to make any progress toward cleaning itself up. Okay, so maybe my actual thoughts were neither quite so severe nor so melodramatic, but I certainly didn't have confidence I was going to be able to get to where I have. Doing a half marathon without embarrassing myself and/or losing control of any bodily functions en route would be, you know, a nice affirmation.

(Truth be told, a teensy part of me does wonder if I could do the whole marathon. I mean, I did run 10 miles Sunday night, and that was after having done all that walking around Manhattan. But no way I'm going to embark on that now. I'll be lucky if I don't injure myself getting ready for the half anyway. Or get hit by a car. Or get gunned down by someone that aesthetically offended by how dorky I look when I run.)