Broad Street Run: Place your bets

You can run or you can hide.

2015 Broad Street Run registration opened Sunday and for the next 11 days you have to choose.

Do I stay or do I go?

For most people, this is easy. The running community stays on an even keel, 12 months a year, fluctuating slightly in form, staying within reasonable weight limits and only injuries change their minds, especially if this is their annual event.

Of course there are always newcomers, intrigued by it all. Some do it once to say they did it and fade back into reality. Others try it a second time, usually forgetting how hard it actually was.

And then there's folks like me. My training and weight fluctuations look like a Sine Curve, up and down, like a heartbeat on a monitor.

And then comes D Day, interestingly on Super Bowl Sunday. Twelve days of soul searching, maybe.

Currently, I am running in Ringo Adamson's weekly 5k at Rowan on Sundays, progressively moving backward as the bone-chilling winds leave me farther and farther behind my usual frames of reference. On Jan. 25, I ran 35:09 and was happy with that. The only way I get through that last mile heading toward Bowe Blvd., is by saying one big Rosary.  It comes out as mostly Hail Mary's said in a cadence that matches my breathing. One Our Father and a few Glory Be's and a look back near the finish line to see if, as Satchel Paige once said, somebody may be gaining on you. Yesterday, I pushed hard and got home in 33:59. The prayers started even earlier.

But the numbers don't lie. The scale said: 260.  Should be 240. That's twenty pounds, 13 weeks. This year's 33:59 was 32:09 last year. Force equals mass times acceleration. Yes, doc, that's why my ankles look so swollen.

This week, I ramped it up at the Rowan Recreation Center. Thirty minutes of running on the 160-yard track, 30 minutes on the treadmill, incline 15, speed 3.0. It has worked well, although the ROTC Army guy who upchucked last week on the final straightaway made me recoil and head right to the elliptical machines.

A year ago, I made a few side bets with Inquirer colleagues Matt Breen, Kate Harman and Tim McManus. A minute a year. Since I am 61 and they are under 30 and no one is in really great shape, it was stealing money, or more specifically, three Milky Ways to the good.

This year, I may add another element. We go pound-for-pound. I get an extra second for every pound. I might get an extra two minutes from Harman, who was a multi-sport athlete at Rowan not too long ago.

So, yes, I will not hide.

I am not Mitt Romney. I will run.

The Phillies 5k is March 28. There will be the Adrenaline Run and a few others down the road. And breaking two-hours again will be the goal.

So all you nutritionists and trainers, I lend you my ears. I'm going to have to work off a lot of Milky Ways …

Read more Sports Doc for Sports Medicine and Fitness.