Dynamitin’ depot, bricks are pourin’ down
Cost your reputation if they catch you hangin’ round
Ev’ry choice you look at serves but to confuse
Reckon you could call it the United States Blues
Oh baby, One more Saturday night
Un huh, One more Saturday night

— robert c. christie hunter

—

And then, in my darkest moment, a light came down from the heavens and said, “Hey try this new app for designing a Fancy Training Plan ©.”

OK, maybe the greatest revelation in my life would have been better spent on a plan for world peace or how to work Netflix, but epiphanies are where you find them.

And so I have a new training plan and a new pack of iron percolating in my veins. One more infusion, one more three days of living hell, one more Saturday night. Except it’s Sunday.

I only learned yesterday about One More Saturday Night and the fisticuffs Weir and Hunter had over the lyrics. I have led a sheltered life.

In an effort to return from a brief foray to hell, I ran today in the sheltered confines of the SCC track. 2 miles at 16:10 pace. I normally wouldn’t come here on a Sunday, because it’s soccer day at the Lasso loop and it makes for a spectator sport while running despite the heat, but Mo has been taking the whole death by running thing a bit more seriously for the past few days, and I was afraid she’d catch me.

Sundays are a different beast at the track. It’s only open for five hours, and every Serious Runner in North America appears to be getting in their long runs here. But that made for a spectator sport in itself. Maybe someday I’ll get back to where I can call myself a runner as well. Dramatic sigh.

And that’s where the Fancy Training Plan © comes in.

I am cautiously optimistic that this will work, in the same way I maintain hope for Mideast peace and Pancakes in a Jug. It’s a bit less optimistic (“more realistic”) than my previous iteration, and has a lot of colorful graphs. Who could doubt a training plan with colorful graphs.

So if I can just make it past the second infusion, and survive the three days after, and gradually build up some iron reserves again, and somehow remove the image of the little orange man trying to pose with the Spanish team at the awards ceremony, this might just work.

Or it might not.

Only one way to find out.

Reckon you could call it the United States Blues.

One more Saturday night.

On a Sunday …

p.s. dear Worker Power solicitor: standing at our door staring at us saying you will not leave until we agree to join your group might not be the most effective manner of soliciting members. If I wanted to be intimidated into political change I would’ve just bought a red hat. Maybe if you offered Pancakes in a Jug to new recruits?