2010: The Suckfest Endeth

I'm at 1870 miles for the year, with one day to go. Last year, I ran about 2250, the year before 2700, the year before over 3100.  Looks like I've got four or five years before I have to start running backward.

This was a bad year for almost everyone. Looking through my blogroll, there's houses lost to flood and to foreclosure. There's breast cancer, myeloma, prostate cancer and skin cancer. There's lost jobs, divorces and miscarriages. There's a ton of injuries, including several broken bones.

2011 has to be better.

People always seem to want the details of my personal life on this blog, but things have not been good and I didn't want to add to the general misery. There was more than a little surprise when I mentioned a relationship breaking up, when I hadn't mentioned that I'd been in one. There's some serious financial problems - racing is pretty much out of the question at the moment because of it.

And then there's the health stuff I keep alluding to and never quite discuss. Last year, I had the swine flu and then pneumonia and it seems to have ravaged my lungs; I've got allergies and asthma I never had before and it hasn't been sorted out. I feel a little silly complaining that my vital lung capacity has been halved... it's now average. I won't be winning any races, but then, most people don't.

The other thing I've not been talking about is depression. I've battled clinical depression my entire life; it runs in the family - four siblings are on anti-depressants (four different classes, so I doubt any work well). I had to check myself in to a hospital for a few days a couple times this year. It was that or kill myself. Yeah, that bad.

An interesting development was getting a PET scan of my brain. Everyone knows my brain just doesn't work like everyone else's. In some ways it works very well (in 6th grade, had my IQ measured at 174). But parts don't seem to work well at all... hippocampus, amygdala, prefrontal cortex... and it mirrors what depression does: inability to focus, concentrate, decide, respond emotionally, remember. It's a chicken-and-egg thing; does the illness lead to the poor brain function or does the poor function lead to depression?

I've decided the thing to do is to show that one can be both depressed and happy. It's not an either/or proposition. It's the goal for 2011, as the running goals are still nebulous (maybe Sawtooth 100).

So, what's promising for the next year? I've fallen in love. Some of you knew before I did. Some of you suspect you know who I mean (and some would be right and some wrong). On paper, it'd be a ludicrous match - and I've been steering clear of doing anything about it because of that - but you can't choose who you fall in love with and I could use a little "ludicrous" right now.

So, there. You're up to date. See you in 2011.