I'm going to run a five-minute mile. Actually, a sub five-minute mile. Not today, that's for sure. (I'm not even going for a run today.) More like the Fall of 2004, after the weather here in New England warms and then cools again. This five-minute mile is not intended to be a metaphor. Instead it is four quarter-mile runs each done in seventy-five seconds or so, all strung together bringing me to the finish line in less than five minutes.

Funny, painful, top-of-the-list of things that make this difficult to achieve is the fact that I'm fifty-one years old. Though I had the idea while sitting with a great friend (a four-time All-American middle distance runner at Brandeis University in the late seventies), sipping and then -I'm sure - finishing a bottle of port about four months before my fiftieth. He asked me if I was planning anything for that big day. Well as he knows me the expected answer was more in the realm of: you inviting Barbara, Deb, Tovah? dee jee or a band? Open bar or cash? Instead I said, I'm gonna run a five-minute mile. He grabbed the phone and called another close friend (of course another All-American collegiate runner) and they laughed. They laughed and laughed. They said I couldn't do it. They loved it though, they were psyched, they were living that idea with me. But they were right, I couldn't do it. But I will.

What's the weather like tomorrow?