The Big Idea

I’d feel a lot better about the next two weeks running from work to rehearsals to performances to triathlons to business trips if I weren’t so fucking sore.

I hadn’t planned on running the Bronx Half Marathon Sunday morning. I’ve done it for the last four years. See, there’s a race in every borough, and if you do all five, you get a little patch and a letter that says, basically, “You rule.” But the Bronx Half is always excruciating, primarily because a) it’s July and b) the Bronx is 99% concrete, thus, it hella’ hot. But my brother and his wife were in, they had a car reserved, so I figured, ‘What the heck.’

What the heck? What an idiot.

I’ll spare you the mile by mile breakdown, largely because I don’t want to relive it. Suffice to say that miles 7-11 are a brutal stretch of straight, out-and-back, rolling black macadam. By the time I made the turn around (about 9.5 miles), I was riddled with goose bumps — dehydration — and dragging my leaden legs behind me. I walked water breaks every mile, drinking one and pouring the other over my head. I was a mess.

The lesson? Well, if you’re busy with workin’ and rockin’ and socializin’ and such, something’s gonna’ give. And Sunday, it became apparent to me that it’s me, it’s my body, that’s suffering for it all. Humbling.

So while I’d like to tell you that I’ve spent the balance of my time since then stretching and resting, well, I can’t. Instead, I’ve been biking up and down the West Side, dining with family and colleagues, and hangin’ in my recording studio puttin’ down some new songs. Tonight, The Smith Family performs, my band rehearses tomorrow and performs Friday, then it’s off to Montauk for the Montauk Lighthouse Sprint Triathlon. Then get this: back Sunday night, off to Miami Monday and Tuesday, then The Smith Family is at it again Thursday. Silly. Stupid silly.

I guess I don’t know any other way. There’s so much living to do, and life is, after all, so finite. Living forever’s out of the question. Living forever today’s the only option.