Running a race? Me? Really? Don't be ridiculous.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am not fast. I never have been. I've come to terms with the fact that I never will be. As someone who has watched more than his fair share of sports both professionally and for fun, I know that athleticism is a physical characteristic that never leaves you. If you have it, you have it. And ladies and gentlemen, I don't have it.

That's fine. I've accepted my lack of velocity ever since I "ran" a mile for gym class at age 10 and clocked in at a robust 17:18. Granted, this is mostly due to the fact that I walked the entire thing with my friend Matt, but over the 17 years that have passed since I have not shown the predilection nor the aptitude for learning how to run one faster than that. And that's ok.

Of course, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I had, in fact, gotten faster. In high school when I "played" football -- there's a reason "played" is in quotes -- I ran a timed mile in 8:30, though I did weigh significantly more at the time. While I didn't time myself at any point, I did begin to run on a regular basis in college, sometimes as many as seven days a week, usually at a fair brisk pace and never indoors. Given that I went to school near Chicago, this was not a smart idea for approximately 11.5 months out of the year.

If you'd ever like to know what lake-effect snow in your face feels like in -20-degree weather, I'm happy to tell you. It isn't good.

But I never ran races. Never. I was not one of those people who trained for road races and became obsessed with collecting bibs, breaking their PRs or measuring my splits. In fact, I had never run a race before in my entire life, and while the idea of running a marathon was always an athletic achievement I had considered striving for, it's become extremely clear to me over the years that I'm far more interested in telling people I ran a marathon after the fact than I am in actually doing it. After all, why would I want to duplicate a feat that killed the first person to ever accomplish it? Seems somewhat counterintuitive when applied to my general goal of staying alive.

We're entering the home stretch, and it will not be easy

I love my family. Most people love their families. But most people can also understand the complexity of family overload. I know I do. Strangely, though, for me "overload" isn't really so much about the quality time of finding out from each of your family members that they have some girl they want you to meet -- though that is its own special kind of overload. No this is about food.

And in my family, you get overloaded with food almost every time you see them.

That's fine. As my grandmother has put it, if you're going to go out to eat, you may as well eat well, and if the discomfort I felt wearing all of my old pants over the last five years is any indication, I agree with the sentiment. However, there is one positively brutal stretch of the year that includes so many family gatherings it makes people's fears about gaining weight during late December seem like child's play. Every year from mid-March until Mid-May if you try and fail to make plans with me on a weekend it's a good bet it's because my family has taken me hostage, and I'm busy consuming all of the food that comes with it. To wit, all of these fall within a span of roughly eight weeks:

My uncle's birthday
Passover
My mother's birthday
My father's birthday
Mother's Day
My step-mother's birthday (which this year is the same day as Mother's Day)

I should note that this stretch also includes two cousins birthdays and has in the past included the birthday of more than one person I have dated, fortunately for me though, both of those cousins do not live in New York and I'm no longer dating any of those women, which eases up the docket a little bit. The long and short of this, however, is that over this period there is a lot of eating. And my family has never been one for the light crackers and cheese hors d'oeurves, either. When we barbecue we serve diced up sausage and skirt steak before you've walked in the door, let alone sat down for an appetizer. This is made even more complicated by the fact that my mother, father, step-mother and sister-in-law all happen to be tremendous cooks, so generally speaking, even if you're full, you don't want that brisket at the passover seder to go to waste.