I HAD SHIT TO DO TONIGHT

But this morning’s awesomely brutal Hello, Dolly! choreography rehearsal literally sent me home into to a three-hour coma. AND LOTS OF CREAKY JOINTS. So instead of doing active shit tonight, I passively sent some photos from my phone to be printed at Walgreens as possibilities for the dramatic Jake-stars-in-the-theater wall I’m curating for my bedroom. My verdict: meh. The cropping feature on the app isn’t entirely accurate, and the cropping feature on the app isn’t accurate at all. Neither is the cropping feature:

And did I mention passive? Because I also bought two pints of Ben & Jerry’s when I picked up the photos and headed right home to binge on Lifetime Intimate Portraits of Bea Arthur, Rue McClanahan, Betty White and Estelle Getty. WHICH. IS. SO. NOT. GAY. NO. NOT. AT. ALL. SHUT. UP. SHEESH.

Rude.

What’s more appalling:

That I’m having ice cream for dinner or that I just said Kitty Kitty Bang Bang out loud in public?

Breakfast pie!

OK ... super-late-breakfast pie ...

#bodygoals

Flashback Saturday: Marathon Injuries Edition

Bragging rights: I'm incredibly proud that I've run seven marathons, and while I've stopped just blurting it out in song to strangers on the street, I still get a kick out of telling people about it whenever running comes up in a conversation.

If you've met me in person, though, you know I'm not built like a runner. I'm tall and weighty (and unfortunately getting weightier as I age), which absolutely excludes me from ever being (or even enjoying being) a sprinter. But twelve years ago, after discovering the joys of running for fun and fitness on Chicago's 17-mile trail along Lake Michigan, I noticed that longer distances were getting easier and easier to run ... so I took a deep breath of trepidation and registered to run the Chicago Marathon. The experience was supposed to be a bucket-list one-and-done, but I was so moved to tears by what I'd worked to accomplish just to cross the starting line that I vowed I'd keep doing it until I got too bored or too injured.

Well, duh. Injured. You can't spell marathon without injured. And though I'd survived my first marathon from my first official training run all the way through to the finish line -- which I did pretty much cluelessly all by myself with no official training program and no running buddies -- without a single injury, I started falling apart regularly every year after that. Especially in my feet. Oh, and in my ankles. Oh, and in my knees too. But -- unlike every endurance runner past, present and future -- I thankfully never had to endure the misery of chafed, bleeding nipples.

I just said nipples.

Anyway, Facebook just reminded me of a particularly troubling injury I had eight years ago -- mere days before I was due to run my fifth Chicago Marathon -- where the top of my right foot suddenly grew a painfully tender ostrich egg. I got an emergency appointment with one of Chicago's leading running doctors -- named-for-the-wrong-body-part Dr. Chin -- and learned that I had stress fractures in all my metatarsals; my body had built up a gelatinous goo of cartilage to protect it; and the muscles, tendons and fatty myelin sheathing around the nerves in my foot had started to swell in reaction to everything as though I'd had a sprain. And there was no way it was going away before the race.

But! Apparently it was a not-uncommon injury, and Dr. Chin showed me how to take care of Mr. Foot by icing it day and night, popping ibuprofen like Rush Limbaugh at a rave, saying words like analgesic and ouch, and lacing my right running shoe across my toes, up the sides and then across the top to minimize pressure on my precious baby ostrich while still maintaining a locked-in fit that would keep my foot from slipping and flopping as I ran.

And it worked! I was miserable for the entire four-plus (but still not five, because five is just embarrassing in the cool running circles) hours I ran, but I finished, I got my medal, I did my traditional walking-backward-down-the-steps-because-I-didn't-trust-my-knees-to-bend-forward-without-an-ugly-topple to find a cab on Michigan Avenue, and I went home to whimper. And stink. And shower. And keep whimpering. And then eat four pints of Ben & Jerry's in alphabetical order according to flavor name. Seriously. Because that's how I rolled after I ran each marathon. Or limped. Whatever.

The 2017 Chicago Marathon is tomorrow. And while I feel injured just from typing that sentence, I'm still thrilled that I was a part of it for so long. And I'm even more thrilled for all my friends from across the country who have trained all summer and are running this glorious -- and gloriously flat -- race this weekend. And whether you're a first-timer or a veteran and whether you're injured or in perfect working order, I hope you all enjoy every moment of the experience -- from the enormous expo to the cheering Boystown throngs at the best water station on the entire route to that cruel, cruel hill on Roosevelt Road at mile 25.9 to the mountains of free bananas in the finishers corral. You rock, I'm already proud of you ... and get ready to start blurting out your bragging rights in song to every stranger on the street.

Feet and ice cream

So the dermatologist told me I could take my mole-excision stitches out of my foot by myself on Friday or Saturday if the wound looked healed and the stitches felt like they were “pulling.” The wound definitely looked healed and I convinced myself that the stitches were indeed pulling on Friday night, so I got out the pointy little dissection scissors I still have from my college I’m-gonna-be-a-doctor-someday biology class, sterilized them with rubbing alcohol and started trying to snip the tiny little stitches on the outside of my foot. But my eyes are 42 years old, the outside of my foot is far away, and my hips and knees have all the flexibility of a Faux News anchor in a Sarah-Palin-is-totally-smarter-than-a-box-of-farts discussion. And by the time I’d hacked away enough of the stitches that there was no turning back, I realized there was no way I was going to get them all out with any precision … or even with any degree of certainty.

The domestic partner was gone, but he tends to be squeamish about such things anyway. Fortunately, our buddy Mike was staying at our house for Market Days, the Boystown street festival that elevates crowds, noise, drunkenness and shirtlessness into an art form, and he wasn’t squeamish in the least. So he picked out the last little bits of my stitches, I gently washed the wound, and as I started to bandage it for stability, the damn thing ripped open.

Which meant I got to traverse about 4,000 miles of crowded street fair all weekend in heavy bandages, sturdy shoes, and the hopes that no drunken fool would spill beer or full bodyweight on my foot. I carried a triage kit in a pocket of my cargo shorts in case I had to rebuild my foot after such an emergency, but it survived the weekend with nothing worse than a stabbing pain every time I took a step.

Which almost martyred me because Mike wanted to experience everything Boystown had to offer this weekend. So we did a lot of walking. And standing. And shuffling through unmoving crowds. And dancing. In place. Because of the crowds. But still.

On the plus side, I relished sleeping until 9:00 on Saturday morning instead of getting up at 5:00 to run 14 miles on a gaping foot wound. So there’s that. And even though I rarely wore a shirt this weekend, I abandoned all pretense that I like to eat radishes for breakfast and I stuffed endless piles of sugary carbs in my face at every meal. Which is why this gratuitous photo of me and (left to right) my impossibly hot friend Brad, a friend of his, and my handsome and intrepid foot-suture-snipping buddy Mike at the street fair is cropped above the waistline, Sunshine:

Speaking of sugary carbs, I have been extremely weak-willed this summer about one of my biggest vices: ice cream. I could happily eat ice cream for every meal every day of my life and regret nothing. Except the loss of my ability to see my feet. Which means I’d never get those damn stitches out. Those of you who keep track of such things may remember that my reward for finishing my last marathon was four flavors of Ben & Jerry’s, consumed alphabetically in bed in front of a DVR full of Bones reruns. (It’s a known fact that ice cream is healthier for you if you eat it alphabetically while watching fake but fabulously graphic autopsies performed against a whimsical background of insouciantly denied romantic attraction. Look it up.)

The only two instances where I can always say no to ice cream are if it’s a flavor I don’t love or if it’s just cheap store-brand crap. And the flavors I love tend to be pretty nothin’-but-sugar simple: vanilla ice cream with cookie dough, brownie bits, chocolate pieces, candy, cake, fudge and/or frosting.

Unfortunately, in my old age I’ve developed a disturbing new ice-cream-related shopping disorder: I’ll look through the window at the grocery store freezer, find a Ben & Jerry’s flavor I like, reach in to grab it, and not notice until I’m all the way home that I’ve actually picked up the flavor that was next to it … which is invariably a flavor I hate, like Nuts ’n’ Squirrel or Crunch Limbaugh or Jake’s Excised Moles or Sarah Praline. (I really hate nuts in my ice cream.)

Thankfully, my Frozen Treat Dementia (FrTD) probably keeps me from actually consuming ice cream for every meal every day of my life instead of just blogging about it in the abstract. Which is how I’m able to keep my weight at a reasonable level year after year. And as added insurance, every year or so I get another mole or two hacked out of my body. And now, to prevent myself from ever eating anything again, I cut out my own stitches too early and watch myself burst open all over the bathroom floor. It works like magic.

My sixth marathon!

First of all, this year's Chicago Marathon logo was once again ... weird. This time it was built around the theme of shoe prints, which is neither original nor particularly attractive, and it had the unfortunate sub-theme of being built around images of unattractive runners covered in shoe prints as though they had fallen in the race and the other runners had trampled them into a state of gradient-colored flatness. And you couldn't escape these ugly, trampled, gradient-colored runners anywhere you went in Chicago for a couple weeks before the marathon:

Thankfully, the images did not make it onto the marathon shirts, which, true to tradition, were another kind of ugly altogether. But more on that later.

Because we must respect the chronology of marathon events. So here is part of our crew at the packet pickup the day before the marathon: Peter and I, who committed to run the marathon and actually did it, and Matthew and Taz, who are big quitters. Except Matthew ran me in from miles 21 to 26 so I officially am not making fun of him. And Taz got up early to volunteer at a water station, so she's a marathon saint as well. The event alert system we're standing in front of was set at moderate because the weather was so cold. Which is better than the moderate-to-severe alerts we got last year because of the heat.

The packet pickup is essentially a massive trade show with billions of booths selling everything from running gear and shoes and headphone holder-in-placers to souvenir posters and shirts to registrations for other marathons. And there are tons of cool signs and things you can use as photo ops:

This year there was also a photo-op sign that wasn't quite as marathon-related as one would expect, but I'm never one to not follow directions:

The marathon was cold. So cold, in fact, that our triathlon friends Simon and Russ lent me their running tights the night before. Which was awesome, but in hindsight I probably should have chosen a different pair of shorts to wear over them because my baggy gray-and-red shorts, though built with nicely deep zippered pockets that can hold all the running gels a fella could need for a marathon, look like they're part of a bar mitzvah clown outfit when worn over black leggings:

Then again, this is me we're talking about here: the vanguard of running fashion. And before the marathon was over, cheap knockoffs of my outfit were spotted on runways (ahem) all over Chicago:
(Yes, that big orange PROOF indicates I stole these images from the Marathon photo site. But I intend to buy most of them so it's more like I'm using them through a borrow-to-own program. In any case, I stole them for you people so please don't call the cops. Because you've already looked at the pictures, which is exactly like wearing a dress to a party and then returning it to the store the next day, so you're just as guilty as I am.)

I have no decent photos of me in miles 0 through 17, which were thankfully really easy and enjoyable to run. Especially because I had disposable layers of clothing I threw away or handed to random domestic partners I encountered along the race route as my body got warmer. So you'll have to imagine this picture is me at mile 2 or so, with a white hoodie, a white throw-away jacket, black gloves and a black hat:

Here I am at mile 5, after I've thrown away the disposable jacket and the hat but I still have on the hoodie and the gloves that I have not told you you can stop imagining yet:

Here I'm going to ask you to imagine that this lifesize cutout of me is actually me. Which will be easy to do because it looks exactly like a lifesize cutout of me. It's wearing the hoodie I managed to hand off to some random domestic partner at mile 7 as he and Matthew and Craig and James met us on their intrepid journey to cheer Pete and me to victory. That's the official marathon shirt that the imaginary me is wearing, by the way. I don't mind the logo on the front, but the color is the kind of turquoise that even a Native American would have reservations (ahem) about wearing:

OK. You can stop imagining now. Here I am around mile 18 (for real!), when the pain started to set in. Ironically, it wasn't the foot pain that had threatened to keep me out of the marathon altogether a week before the race. It was just the all-over, why-am-I-doing-this pain that usually hits me right around mile 18. Plus my head cold had clearly taken up residence in my lungs by this point and I'd begun worrying that if I started to cough I may never be able to stop:

So this is what I look like running in pain. Fashion pain:
Thankfully, Matthew the marathon dropper-outer met me at mile 21 and ran me through the pain all the way to mile 26:

From the Department of Really Not That Interesting Two-Camera Perspectives: Matthew (who brought his camera with him so I could have stand-in pictures for miles 0 through 21) took this picture of me running under a bridge covered with marathon photographers:

Here's what my fellow runners and I looked like from the photographers' perspective:

Neat, huh?

I don't know where this picture was taken, but since official marathon photos are more expensive than a child-molestation payout and priest-relocation fees combined, I most certainly didn't stick my tongue out at a marathon photographer on purpose. It was so cold at the beginning of the run that our Gatorade felt syrupy on our lips and our running gels had taken on the consistency of week-old Play-Doh, so I imagine I'm sticking my tongue out here trying to get the sticky Gatorade/gel goo off my lips:

In any case, neither cold nor foot injury nor fashion humiliation nor sticky lips nor lungs full of snot could stop me from finishing the marathon. And I even managed to stay under my new, revised, slow-old-guy 5:00 finishing time goal, but just by seconds:
(For those of you unfamiliar with the way giant races are timed, my 7:40:14 start time tells you how long it took me to get across the start line in the crowd of runners. I have no idea why they do time splits in 5K increments since exactly nobody knows (without cheating) how many miles equals, say, a 35K, but you can see I was sticking pretty well to 31-32-minute 5Ks until I hit my wall o' pain somewhere around the 30K mark. And I love knowing that exactly 25,201 people crossed the finish line faster than I did.)

So once you cross the finish line and get your medal and get your timing chip sawed off your shoe, you can stop for all the free bananas and water and cookies and bagles and beer (!) you want in the finisher's area ... plus you can pose for one final official photo:

And once you hobble your way out of the finishers' area, if you're lucky your fabulous domestic partner will be waiting for you right at the exit. And even though you feel like death and smell like week-old death, he will give you a big wonderful hug that will make you feel even more proud of the things you've accomplished in your life:

I also took a final victory pose with Matthew, who had left me at mile 26 so I could run the final .2 miles all by myself to the finish line:

And I finally met my ugly-shirted doppelgänger in person and felt obligated to pose with him since he'd spent the day cheering me on all along the marathon route:

At the finisher's party, where my body suddenly realized holy shit I'm not running anymore so I should probably stop pretending it's not freezing outside I put my white hoodie back on and posed with Pete and our fabulous signs that Matthew made for us:

And then all the boys from our running group who actually ran the marathon posed for one last photo op, discreetly keeping our eyes from the fashion freak show going on under my shorts:

And then! The day after the marathon—after a very lengthy soak in our Jacuzzi tub—I commenced enjoying my sweet, sweet marathon reward. In alphabetical order: