That means I’m back in a cushy pair of Saucony’s and running a leisurely 10-minute mile at all hours of the day– but mostly at night because A) Cache Valley’s star-lit, cricket filled evenings can’t be beat and B) lower chance of running into/being seen by people I know. I’m not sure what happened between October 2009 and June 9, 2010, but the choice of filling my closet with Medium sized T-shirts and 30-waist pants now feels like a poor one, my home-run hitting, Kardashian rivaling butt’s got some seam-splitting back and the feeling of jiggle when I go down a flight of stairs is 236% overrated.

Being a “tall guy”, convention says all my vertical space helps in subtly stashing weight– that or people are lying when they say “You aren’t faaaaaat”. Still, I’m pretty sure it’s the latter, because the mirror tells me my hard-fought six-pack is gone, my arms look like unwrapped tubes of Pillsbury sugar cookie dough, and if I shaved my chest I could make some enticing cleavage.  That and the other night when I pushed my gut out and jiggled it for “I’m overweight I tell ya!!” effect, Little Dude disgustedly crinkled his nose and said, “Don’t do that, Papa. It looks like you ate 325 sheep and turned into a fat dude.”

Not to say I’m crying about it. Every year over the last four (d**n you, aging metabolism!) I come down from the off-season and have a pants-too-tight realization that motivates me into fighting shape just in time to shirtlessly enjoy the later half of summer… before I gorge myself into a 15-20 pound ice cream/pizza/burger/chocolate chip cookie “I’ll eat what I want because I deserve it” weight gain over winter.

Of course, I blame Tony Horton and his P90X. Once you realize the key to weight loss and sculpting a “Holy crap– that’s me!?” body, it’s easy to fall off the bandwagon because you know the formula– and know that it works. The real frustration is I’m rhetorically punching myself in the rhetorical privates for giving up all the dedicated sweat equity and egg-white eating from last year. After all, what’s the fun of setting goals if you can’t practice achieving them over and over?

Answer: No fun.Or I’ll just keep telling myself that.

In the mean time, I’m logging miles and flipping that Ragnar Relay guy breath mints.