So of course, the week I force myself to start running again is filled with rain, topped off by a Monsoonado grand-finale Sunday night. A dr-Erie weekend indeed.
A tornado in Erie? My phone went off like there was an incoming air raid. Uh … stop, drop and roll? What’s the protocol? Grab all the nonperishables, a flashlight and a deck of UNO cards and run to the basement?
I was in the middle of watching a movie so I did none of that.
Anyway, I’ll get to how that affected my weekend. I’ve had trouble sleeping for a long time. It’s not insomnia or anything like that, so I’m not trying to play it up to be something it’s not.
I’m not gonna play my feel-bad-for-me card on something as trivial as that. It’s just never come easy.
When I was in elementary school I had this ‘80s GE alarm clock that I’d play at night that had an old analog radio dial and an antenna on it. Vintage stuff, dudes.
Sometimes I’d play our local pop station, 98PXY, but it was usually set to sports talk radio since that was the easiest to fall asleep to.
I still remember the host’s catch phrase about “slaving over a hot microphone” that he’d give after playing a portion of Rush’s “The Spirit Of Radio.”
To this day, I still choose to have something playing in the background when I go to bed, whether it’s a boring podcast or some random video on YouTube. I could probably do without it, but it’s something I’m used to at this point.
But as I got older, I discovered how much of a difference exercise also made in my sleeping habits, despite all the complaining I do about it.
I don’t run on the dreadmill, and especially not the tiny indoor track at the Rec, because it bores the hell out of me.
Run toward the wall, turn. Run toward the next wall, turn. It’s NASCAR without the wrecks. Unless you’re running clockwise on a Thursday, then there might be a wreck.
To avoid this I have battled the elements, while running and otherwise, because I am a little stubborn and mostly stupid.
I have flat-out refused to carry around an umbrella for as long as I can remember. I just don’t like them.
They’re always breaking, you gotta shake them out and piss off everyone around you whenever you’re about to enter a building and they make me feel like a wimp. Like I’m Mary Poppins or something. Or a geisha.
They need to invent a manbrella that won’t put a dent in my deluded sense of rugged manliness and keep me out of the rain at the same time. Preferably one that I can run with.
If it existed, I could comfortably exercise outside without getting drenched, but I’ll try to do without it for now.
The benefits of becoming a morning person and exercising greatly outweigh the difficulty of the mental battle that ensues after my alarm goes off. But again, I’m mostly stupid, so it’s never that simple.
I tried to suck it up and run in the rain this weekend, but it did not go well. So I turned around and went home. And I did not sleep well.
Basically, the too-long-didn’t-read footer for this column is that it needs to stop raining so I can get some rest. It’s really Erie-tating me. OK, enough of that.

KYLE JOSEPH
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