One of the best New Year’s cartoons I’ve seen depicted a man lying in bed, the blankets pulled up to his weary eyes, and a party hat on his head.

The man was looking at a calendar on the wall that read Jan. 2. A bubble over his head revealed his thoughts – “What happened to New Year’s Day?”

We’ve all partied too much on New Year’s Eve, perhaps to the point of thinking there is no tomorrow, but that wasn’t me this year. I watched as others imbibed, and when asked why, I explained that I didn’t want to be hung over while trying to run a road race, the Millennium Mile, on New Year’s Day.

While I’ve done greater distances, I can’t imagine trying to run at all with insides that felt like goo. A fellow partygoer agreed, and even suggested I’d probably be done in about five or six minutes anyways.

At that I had to laugh. I doubt I’ve ever been able to run a five-minute mile. In fact, before Tuesday, the only time I can remember being timed in a mile was sophomore year of high school. I’m pretty sure it was for a fitness test in gym class, and I believe I ran it in 6 minutes, 15 seconds.

That was quite some time ago, and even if I ran as much now as I did then, I doubt I’d come close to that time. My hope for this race was just that I’d come in under 10 minutes.

The good news was that Tuesday was a sunny day. The bad news was that it was the start of that stretch of cold days that barreled through the area last week.

I dug deep into the closet to find something I could wear to keep warm, and ended up wearing a sweat suit that I bought in college. The pants were probably a little too small, and the shirt had a giant paw print on the back and a series of prints running up one arm. I went shopping for new outdoor exercise clothes the next day.

The race went well, considering it was my first run since the Santa Shuffle. My knees and shins weren’t too happy while we were warming up, but they held up fine during the race, and thanks to the shorter distance, I had enough left in me for a little kick at the end.

My place was somewhere over 750, but I ran the mile in 8:28, well under the time I hoped to finish.

And I’ve already signed up for the next race. I’ll be doing Millennium’s Shamrock Shuffle, a two-mile race, on March 24. That gives me almost three months to get ready, so maybe I should shoot for a time of under 18 minutes.

Joe Marchilena writes a weekly
fitness column for Hampshire Hills.
To find out more information about
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