National Running Day and Birthday Walk - 2013 Edition

          So what does one do on National Running Day when one can’t run? Well in my case, I gave it the old college try. Running was not planned that day, but with so much internet posts about it, an attempt would have to be made. It would have been preferable to do it outdoors of course, but I had to keep it on the treadmill so as to soften the blow on my brittle muscles and joints. Slowest speed possible: check, 1 percent incline: check, legs and ankles ready: question mark. Keeping my strides as light as possible, the treadmill belt moved underneath me while I kept anticipating a jolt of pain which never came. I kept going, and jogging, and slogging until I reached 45 minutes and figured that enough was enough. I had kept my National Running Day obligation for another year, albeit indoors on a treadmill. A purist might say that shouldn’t count, but having been unable to run in any way shape or form for several weeks, I’ll consider that a run. Who knows when I’ll be able to do it again or at all?

          In keeping with a birthday tradition of doing a long run which in recent years have now turned into a long walk, the day after National Running Day, I did a trek around my neighborhood. I didn’t venture too far because in case my joints and muscles failed me, at least I was close to home. Believe me, even when I woke up that morning, I was undecided on whether I should do it or not, or which direction to go (drive to the beach or El Dorado Park, or walk down Del Amo Boulevard going east and see how far an hour and a half will take me?). Instead, I kept it around Bixby Knolls and mostly in the Virginia Country Club area where I did my training for the Los Angeles Marathon a couple of times maybe a decade ago. Meanwhile, I had been thinking if it was it time to give up on this annual exercise. The reason why I had doubts was because the mental toughness I developed while training for marathons is no longer what it used to be. Why would I want to do 3 hours or more of this workout when 30 minutes to an hour on the stationary bike or a treadmill hill walk would suffice? Well, mainly because I wanted to prove to myself that it's still doable in spite of my ankle and thigh/hip problems.

          Armed with my cellphone, keys, wallet (in case I had to pay for a cab), some cough drops to keep my mouth moist, and listening to KIIS-FM on the radio-equipped phone, I stepped out into the June gloom and started walking in an unhurried pace. While I moved, I contemplated on what I was going to do. Shall I keep it to 2 hours, the time I used to do when I was still running, or walk for 3 hours regardless of what distance that took me, or go for the usual 12 miles regardless of how long it took me? Last year it took 3 hours and 11 minutes to cover that distance.

          The first hour felt easy mentally, the second hour almost felt likewise until I reached 1:45 when it felt like time slowed down. On the third hour, I tried not to check my watch too often, and that helped a lot. During the walk, I saw a lot of houses being remodeled (the economy must be getting better), gardeners mowing lawns and trimming bushes, squirrels scampering up trees and crossing overhead electrical wires from one post to another. In Los Cerritos Park, there was a smattering of walkers and other exercisers doing their thing. In the middle of the walk, my phone rebooted for no apparent reason so I had to reset the radio station I was listening to. The first cough drop lasted for an hour and 57  minutes and the second one lasted until I finished the walk. It was mostly a no rush walk of about 16 minutes per mile (I didn’t want to pressure myself with pace) until the last 30 to 40 minutes. As I was getting close to 12 miles, I picked up the pace and thought that I should go for something extra and try for a half marathon instead. Well I did manage to do a GPS based half marathon to celebrate my 56^th birthday when the sun never emerged from the June gloom. The pace was faster than last year's 12 miler because there were no hills. After 3 hours, 17 minutes, and 33 seconds, 13.11 miles at 15:04 pace, and 2 bathroom breaks, I had done what I set out to do even with the initial doubts. Not only did the walk prove that I was still capable, but also that I can finish a half marathon without a training plan. That was the plus side. On the minus side, despite the distance, the workout didn't really hit the pleasure areas of my brain like running would have done. But I already accomplished the pleasure the previous day when I ran on the treadmill on National Running Day. Thus ends this year’s edition of my crazy traditions. Same time next year?

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National Running Day and the IRS

Unbelievable, I went to bed at 11 p.m. Friday and was already awake at 2:30 a.m. Saturday.  After lying in bed for another half hour and unable to fall back to sleep, I thought I might as well get up and finish this post which I started writing last Wednesday.

Wednesday, June 6^th was National Running Day but running was not even on my schedule that day because I decided to take a few extra days off since my ankles were still hurting from the three hour birthday walk the previous week. That all changed after I opened my mailbox and found a letter from the almighty IRS. So on National Running Day I dealt with an audit notice from the Internal Revenue Service. How did you spend yours? What does one have to do with the other? Well, other than most people trying to run as far away as possible from the IRS, nothing whatsoever.

Basically, this is what the letter said: please send us a check for $32,800 if you agree with this audit for tax year 2010. Good heavens, I don’t even make that much in a year! So I kept on reading and saw what they said was additional income I had in 2010. Due to the recession which started in 2008, I lost a lot of money in the stock market and moved my regular IRA and Roth IRA to safer bank CD’s which were still earning a decent yield at that time. Well, those retirement CD’s matured in 2010 so I closed my account from this particular bank and immediately brought the checks to another bank with a not so decent interest rate (but slightly better than the previous bank). I opened the same type of retirement accounts – regular and Roth IRA’s so I would not be penalized by the IRS. Their rules state that you have to rollover these types of accounts within 60 days or you would be taxed for the extra income and given an additional penalty of 10% for early withdrawal of a retirement plan. The earliest you can withdraw without being charged the 10% penalty is when you turn 59 ½ years old. I certainly met the 60 day rule since I rolled over the money within 30 minutes of getting the checks.

So this is how my National Running Day started – by digging out my 2010 income tax return, bank statements from that year, copies of the check stubs from the bank I withdrew the money from, and printouts showing me opening accounts of the same type in the new bank. In my 2010 tax return, I indicated this amount in line 11a as a rollover. Apparently this was not enough for the IRS since the previous bank sent them a notice required by law that I withdrew that amount. To the IRS auditors, this just came out as extra income which brought my tax bracket to what for me was the stratosphere. For what they are trying to collect from me, I can’t even imagine what kind of annual income I would have to make. I was given approximately a month to respond to the audit and if I was not a meticulous record keeper, I might have been up sh*t creek trying to contact a couple of banks to get copies of the paperwork because that would have taken time and money. Believe me, they charge you fees for just about everything nowadays. Well, to make a long story short, I found all the supporting paperwork, made copies of them, called the IRS to verify that those were adequate, and typed up a letter of explanation for the discrepancy.

I can see how this happens though. The bank you close your account from is required to report the withdrawal to the IRS while the next bank where you deposit the check doesn’t have to. You will have to do it yourself which I did on line 11a and marked it as a rollover, but apparently, the humans and computers of the IRS missed it. This is apparently the peril of using tax software and electronic filing. Not all the supporting documents are sent to the IRS so they have to question where some inputted numbers come from.

I had to spend several hours dealing with the above situation instead of working out on what was supposed to be a relaxing day off from work. Afterwards, I had to find a compacted stress relieving workout to decompress. So despite not planning on it, I went out for a run on National Running Day to work off the IRS caused stress. Because of the problems with the ankles, I thought I’d just do a 1 minute run with 1 minute walk recovery for 30 minutes so as not to aggravate the injury.  After the first minute and feeling not much discomfort, I kept going to the next minute then the next until I finished a loop back home with my watch indicating that I had run non-stop for 32 minutes. Well that certainly helped a lot with the stress J. At least I was able to contribute to National Running Day even though it wasn’t planned.

Finding the supporting paperwork and running = great stress relievers. Now let’s just hope the IRS agrees with me.

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National Running Day Sentimentality

Running on a treadmill on National Running Day (Wednesday) was not the most ideal way to celebrate it especially when it was not part of my workout schedule, but rather just had to do it to be sentimental. It was something I should have at least done outdoors since it was a beautiful day. Instead I did a token run on the treadmill for thirty minutes plus another thirty minutes on the elliptical machine and twenty minutes on the stationary bike.

                Why all the activity, you ask? Well, National Running Day fell on my birthday and my coworkers threw a potluck party for me at work on the night shift. You know what that means: another bout of overeating. Thus, there was a need afterwards to balance things out by burning those calories. That was the reason for the extended workout. I normally don’t do any aerobic exercise past an hour, but with all the eating we did, I felt the need to do something extra. Even though the slow treadmill run added to the calorie burn, my ankles did not appreciate not being given the extra day off from the activity. Maybe next year I will arrange my schedule better so I can fit in a run day on that date.

As a result, Thursday’s scheduled run became a slog of sorts. Even though I planned for an easy run/walk, my tired legs made for a slower than usual pace and sore than usual ankles. I’ll chalk it up to the previous day’s workout and the junk food induced malaise from the potluck party.

Oh well, such is life. It can’t feel good all the time. Running due to pure sentimentality didn’t help either. I promise to do better next year.

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