BY THE WAY: RACING TO DEADLINE LEADS TO MOMENT OF TRUTH

Some people just need deadlines to keep from bailing out of ambitious New Year's resolutions.

I'm one of those people.

Every year I promise I will test myself in a legitimate road race. So I sign up for the St. Patrick's Day Run in St. Louis. Once I've paid my money, I feel obligated to make an effort to prepare for the 5-mile race.

A month ago I decided that I had better step up the training from a few leisurely miles around the Abe Stuber Track to three or four fast-paced miles. I also planned to play more than one or two games of racquetball a week. You know, crosstraining your way to a leaner, meaner frame of mind and body.

After a few punishing, purple-faced workouts, however, I realized the nasty cigarette habit I picked up recently would have to go. I think I saw a sign in the gym warning patrons that wheezing was prohibited.

I could probably cut down on my visits to the house of Anheuser Busch, too.

Promises, promises. I seem to find every excuse to keep from running. It's raining. It's too cold. It looks like it might snow.

This year I found the best excuse yet. It seems the cops in St. Louis are tired of working the St. Patrick's Day Run and parade. They say hold it somewhere else.

Well, now doesn't that just make you want to give up working out completely, I told my friends from St. Louis with the most exasperated look I could summon.

It doesn't matter, they told me. St. Louis city cops or not, we're going to be downtown the weekend before St. Patrick's Day to run the five miles. Now are you with us or what?

Of course I'm with you. Do you think I'm the type of person who is looking for reasons to back out of a tradition I hold close to my heart? I need my annual moment of truth. It's healthy for the soul, right?

So I resume my soft workout regimen, hoping that one day soon I'll get religion and hit the three- or four-mile plateau. It's all downhill from there, I tell myself.

Then one day I felt inspired. I decided that even though rain was coming down so hard my windshield wiper could barely keep up, I would run around the track at Houck Field House.

I knew immediately that my mental determination was making a difference. Instead of waiting for my legs to feel fluid and relaxed, I stepped up the pace from the beginning. It didn't matter if it felt awkward. I would force myself into a higher realm of fitness. I passed the 12-lap mark, which meant I had only gone a mile, and I felt strong. I reached the 20-lap mark and I still felt like I could hit three or four miles with no problem.

Then something tightened up in my right calf. I'll run through it, I thought. But the tightness only intensified. It felt like a rubber band that was being stretched to the breaking point.

I had no choice but to stop and walk. The mind was willing but the body was chilling.

With little more than a week before THE RACE, what was I going to do? I could always run a few miles and walk the rest. But then I would be minutes behind my friends, who vowed to break the 40-minute barrier this year.

I broke that with ease last year. And I got off to a slow start in the first mile. The difference, however, was that this year I let go of my weekly workout regimen and I had yet to regain the same level of fitness.

It was depressing just thinking about how quickly I let myself deteriorate. This called for some serious meditation in the house Anheuser Busch built.

Wasn't I supposed to work that weekend, anyway? Yeah, that must have been the deadline I was thinking about.

~Bill Heitland is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.