Things To-Do By 40

My birthday just passed. In addition to my regular annual questions of, “where did the time go?” or “when my Dad was my age, he looked like he was 63” another important thought came to mind now that I’m conformably in my 40’s and get asked occasionally  

 “What should have I done by age 40?”

Well, after deep thought, here’s my advice of things every father and maybe every man should have done by age 40:

1. Create a Will. It’s the responsible thing to do especially if you have kids. 

2. Save for retirement. Thankfully I started at 22 when my first boss told me these very wise and insightful words, “I have no idea what a 401K is, I just know you put money in it and you won’t die poor.”

3. Run a Marathon. Or in my case a ‘more achievable’ 10K. And then on the day-of feel like your doing pretty awesome; making really good time, and then when you start getting tired, you pass the 1 mile marker, and then for the next 60 minutes ask yourself over and over again, “Oh God, I can’t feel my toes/legs/tongue...! Why did I do this?” 

4. Celebrate a milestone birthday in a foreign country. Preferably at a local karaoke bar in Kyoto, Japan singing to the tune Bee-Gee’s “Night Fever."  Just don’t fall asleep at 6PM.

5. Do something really adventurous with your spouse before having kids. In our case, we went to New Zealand for 3 weeks. One major highlight and life changing experience - we went caving with 2 guides and thought we were going to die repelling 9 stories down a giant hole. At the time I told my wife, “if you survive and I don’t, please make sure my tombstone says, “Sacrificed his life saving his young beautiful wife, and ended up falling 9 stories into a giant hole in the New Zealand countryside’.” 

By the way, I still want my tombstone to say that regardless of how I end up dying. 

What It Feels Like Just Before Your Legs Fall Off

I did something last weekend that I never imagined I’d ever do – I ran in a marathon. AND it was today that I was finally able walk like a normal person.

Just to be clear, it wasn’t the full 2,667 miles those robots that look like humans run that I met from far off places like Japan, Norway, and Fontana. Nope, it was the beginner’s course. The one just a few notches above the kid’s run to the ice cream cart.

I’ve been preparing for this since the summer with some encouragement by one of my gym instructors. I have to admit when he first brought up the suggestion I had to contemplate the idea for a few days as the thought of running ‘just for the fun of it’ was completely foreign to me.
Call me a traditionalist but since birth I’ve always been a strong believer in running only when it’s absolutely necessary. Like running away from a hungry Cheetah in tall tundra or escaped hungry Velociraptor dinosaur on a forbidden island. Or maybe running alongside an exploding wharf and jumping onto a moving speedboat like Don Johnson.

In the end I joined the ranks of people that run just for the heck of it. They wake up really early when regular folk are still rightfully sleeping, cinch up that iPod and run to the beat of some bad 4-hour long techno song rendition. I chose to leave the 90’s techno in the graveyard where it belongs and replaced it with much more appropriate 1980’s Def Leppard musical selections.

There’s just nothing like running to “Rocket” just before the sun comes up.

Nothing at all.

When I passed that finish line and the realization that I can run for long amounts of time without dying, I immediately realized that with some more training and a few more halves I probably could one-day graduate to a full marathon.
Why not? That guy that was 4 seconds in front of me was 69-years old!
Heck, maybe one day I'll Forrest Gump it and run to Disney World from Hawaii. I’ve already signed up for the L.A. marathon in March – that’s a start.

It now seems a little funny to me that there were times when I thought to myself “what did I just sign myself up for” while running for what felt like hours just before I passed a 1 mile mark. But hey, I got over and finished it anyways.
And I take back all those things I said after passing that finish line (“I’ll never do that EVER again…” “I can’t feel my legs”, “I think my lungs fell out at mile marker 3...”) It’s all ancient history now.

Who knows, maybe one day, I’ll even travel way out to Fontana just to outrun a Cheetah.