Diddy Doped!

Today, I am vindicated. In addition to returning to my morning run in Central Park, I learned from a very reliable source that my crushing NYC Marathon defeat to Sean “Diddy Runs The City” Combs can be chalked up to doping. And it wasn’t mine.

Word on the street (via a credible hip hop reporter I know) is that he was shot up on cortozone, thereby rendering his knee ailment pain free. Ok, so it’s not an Olympic level violation, but it gave him (bad pun alert) a leg up on me. So I feel better about my Coke-a-Cola remedied sugar crash on mile 18. Not that it matters. I still have another 350 or so days until I can truly remedy my poor showing. For myself. Which is who I really lost to.

But it felt good to run this morning. Central Park was gorgeous in the fog and drizzle. It was nearly vacant, and quite still. Leaves were fallen, but incompletely. So the trail around the lake looked like it was dotted with orange and yellow confetti. The water was still, broken only by tiny rain drops and their infinite riiples. It was good to be back.

And so, staggeringly, I am but one week away from the NYC kick-off of my “Livingroom Tour.” Postcards, buttons, t-shirts, and — alas — the one thousand copies of “Almost Home” itself, have yet to grace my doorstep. The yellow sticky on my weekly planner is cluttered with To Do items: rent car, buy martini glasses, fix p.a., re-string guitar, re-alphabetize CDs, etc. etc. etc. But like I said last night, “I’m busy as fuck, and happy as hell.” I like it this way.

THIS JUST IN! I have been scooped! Apparently, as my intrepid Wall Street Journal reporter friend Ron emailed me today, WSJ was ahead of my Puffy cortisone dish. In fact, Mr. Combs was bolstered by a shot of iontophoresis.

From The Journal:

While the rest of the rapper’s body was holding up pretty well under his
intense two-month training schedule, the knee pain threatened to impede his
race efforts. Just 10 hours before the Nov. 2 run, P. Diddy’s personal
sports physicians opted for iontophoresis, a little-known pain treatment
commonly given to professional and college athletes. The therapy uses
electrical impulses to literally push medications through the skin to the
source of the pain.

Didn’t see me gettin’ any shots, didja’? Didn’t see me runnin’ with an entourage. Or laying up in The Ritz afterwards. Nope. Just me. A Coke. And a smile.