Okay, let’s break it down by the numbers:

• Starting weight: 225 pounds
• Current weight: 225 pounds
• Number of brunches consumed yesterday: two
• Time spent looking at fecking hipster in introductory video for nike+, reading FAQs and reviews: 45 minutes
• Workouts last week: Four (including inaugural “why bother?” session on treadmill: “Fitness test, level five, twenty minutes: ‘Can you handle a short stroll to the cafeteria and back?‘”)

Yesterday was Kate’s birthday (hurrah!), so a night spent at the Hotel DuPont, plus a noble Kate-and-John Extended Date tradition of having one early brunch and one late brunch (I mean, really breakfast and lunch, but on Sundays it’s all one long Vale of Brunch from six AM to two PM), plus a birthday dinner where I cooked for the family means that I ended yesterday happy, contented, and stuffed like Templeton the rat, offsetting any ass-narrowing progress I may have made last week with all the yuppie lunches sourced from Ashby’s.

Not that I’m complaining. I managed two early-morning workouts last week. Well, let’s say I managed two early-morning trips to the gym last week; calling what I was doing “working out” is a little enthusiastic. I made up for it with two thirty-minute runs on the weekend with the maharani in her jog stroller (“run faster, daddy! Faster!” — I am not kidding.)

So being a card-carrying member of The Order of Men Who Expect to Lose Seven Pounds a Week if the Just Reduce the Amount of Gravy on Their Chicken-Fried Steak By Half, it’s a little discouraging to not at least see one pound drop. But that’s silly, of course, and I’m telling you about it so I can stick to my guns this week and post some improvement. I’ve got work to do if I’m gonna hit 185 by April, which leaves me six months for actual, by-god marathon training at that point!

PS. to Will Ronco: Thanks very much for the advice that if I ran from home, instead of the gym, I could run for a whole hour. I appreciate the advice, Will, but it occurs to me that you may have forgotten what it was like to be a Human Man, back before you had to make sure to change directions halfway through your workout so you do not alter the rotation of the earth. I’ll get there 🙂

Now that I’m, you know… a marathon runner [see previous post, re: the Portland Marathon], my schedule looks like this:
Monday and Wednesday Nights:

• Feed cat at night, so he won’t scream bloody murder all morning.
• Pick out work clothes, fold them and put them in a bag.
• Hey, look! I found my watch! It must have been in the bag since the last time I worked out at a gym. Like, two years ago.
• Leave bag and clean shirt on a hanger by the door to my closet.
• Put a pair of sneakers, socks, and shorts by the door to my closet.
• Try to remember to put deodorant and a razor in the bag.
• Forget that my padlock is in the garage; go get it. Don’t bother to put on shoes, step in cold cat poop on the lawn. Cat poop goes between toes. Hop inside, wash foot. Put padlock in bag.
• Remember that I’ll need a towel, if I don’t want to do a Comedy Fig Leaf impression in the gym shower. Go get one; put it on the bag.
• Set the alarm clock for 5AM.

Tuesday and Thursday Mornings:

• Alarm goes off at 5AM; roll out of bed, go put on socks, shoes, and shirt. Brush teeth. Admire punk-rock bed head.
• Grab bag, shirt. Walk out front door into dark, still morning. Feel surge of marathon-runner-itude. Try to remember why I’m not just going for a run; remember it has something to do with not taking a noisy shower after six, when LBY is liable to take any excuse to wake up.
• Get in car, drive to Mitch’s Market Street Gym. Park car, walk inside. Swipe entry card three times in scanner, proclaiming myself to be a newbie. Guy behind desk looks like Creed, looks at me tolerantly. Locker room is sixty-five degrees
• Open locker, put in bag and shirt, close padlock.
• Twenty minutes of treadmill (“Fitness test, level five”.) Longest phase of treadmill setup: “Set Weight”. Leave finger on plus button for what seems like an hour, as the numbers rack up. I’m first one on treadmill, so my brontosaurus-like stomping echoes loudly through the space.
• Back downstairs at 5:45AM; open padlock, take out towel, put in gym clothes, lock padlock.
• Take shower (ugh, forgot flip-flops!), back to locker. Open locker, take padlock, put in bag.
• Listen to two guys in locker room bantering about when they get to go to the gym, and how one guy’s wife just started going (probably to Curves, since he mentions that it’s ten bucks a month:) “She really needs to work out.” “Hey, as long as you’re the fat slob!” Both guy #2 and guy #1 were pretty ripped, so I’m not sure where to place this conversation on the Big Internet Numberline of Offensiveness, as of course all conversations must be so graded.
• Put on work clothes, shave, pat pockets one thousand times
• Get in car, drive to Dunkin Donuts, buy iced coffee (marathon runners don’t drink lattes!) and a plain bagel.
• Get on train, blog about a marathon runner’s typical morning. You know, because at this point I have a sample of… one.

So as you can see, with all the ancillary tasks to the twenty minutes of treadmill, it seems that I’m in training to be a marathon valet, rather than a marathon runner. However, I’m hoping that as I gain more practice (TODO: buy a bigger gym bag, flip-flops, get a second set of toiletries, look for padlocks that are easier to open, develop complicated relationship with spaghetti dinners) the actual, you know, workout part will become more prominent and the fumbling with padlocks, less.

And I’m hoping to avoid cat poop. I could do without the cat poop part.