Our modern world is all about convenience. Remote controls. Delivery food. An Internet where you can do anything, any time. Maybe part of what I like about running is there's nothing convenient about it. It's inconvenient and challenging ... and makes us really have to work, both physically and mentally.

There's nothing convenient about forcing yourself to get up an hour early to do a workout. To greeting cold weather by spending extra time dressing in layers. To dealing with all the soreness that comes later.



Dressing up in leggings, holiday socks and a Santa Claus cap on a freezing Saturday morning to go run with a few hundred other crazy people is much less convenient than sleeping in, watching TV or surfing the Web. Maybe that's part of the reason I enjoy doing things like last weekend's Reindeer Run 5K. There's nothing easy about it.

Because while convenience is a good business practice, I could use another word for it: laziness. It's too convenient to take the easy way out too often. To sit on the sidelines. To do the bare minimum. To life a safe, conservative life.

But if you've ever had to summon the energy to make it to the finish line -- especially when your lungs are burning, your muscles are screaming and it's you vs. the urge to throw in the towel -- you know the feeling of achievement from overcoming inertia. Pushing ourselves to meet challenging goals expands our existence. Doing something inconvenient once in a while can be a wonderful thing.

Started Thanksgiving a different way this year: by taking part in the 5K Run/Walk for the Pies, sponsored by our local YMCA. It's a nice break from my usual hermit existence on the holiday -- my family traditionally gathers on the weekend -- to mix and mingle with around 140 other people starting the day in a healthy way.



For Upstate New York in November, it was a very nice day with temps in the 40s and no precipitation. I chose to walk mostly, some brief jogging interludes, as I'm still working up to the traditional Reindeer Run 5K in early December. I probably came in about midway through the finishers, as many folks were walking, sometimes whole families. But I didn't feel a lot of competitiveness in the crowd. Some participants even jogged or walked a few blocks with food donations for the Salvation Army, which is right along the route.



Winning a pie is more random than anything. At the end of the race, you reach in a bucket to get a number. If that number matches the number on a pie, you win it! So I didn't win a pie, but it's a really neat idea.



The time walking does give an opportunity to reflect on the many reasons to be thankful. I'd put health and happiness, family and friends at the top of the list but I really have more reasons than I can easily enumerate. I'm thankful for all that I have, and for that I don't concentrate on what I don't have. And I was certainly thankful to have this nice little event taking me past Lake Ontario on a good morning.

When you own a house, any time you can solve a significant problem with an $8 part, you'll be thankful. Especially when it involves heating your home here in the frozen tundra.

It was a blustery early October day when I saw that my old octopus boiler should have kicked on. It didn't. I checked everything I could and decided to seek professional help. But I was a bit at sea; the person who worked on the house's boiler and plumbing for decades still hasn't returned a call from years ago, and many local furnace firms don't have the best reputation. While out for a birthday gathering for a friend, my pal Dan brought up the name of Northeast Heating, saying they did great for him.

A good furnace guy, of course, is in demand this time of year. The first time I called John from Northeast Heating, he said he was on a job and I should call at 8 a.m. the next day. I did and he guessed he could show up around lunch time. Another call from him and I was busting a move for the home front.

John showed up limping, saying he'd had several knee surgeries and had, against his best instincts, bowled the night before. He was a gregarious, funny gentleman and had a silent sidekick named Virgil, a bald and muscular man. They came directly from Central Casting, it seems. After rattling around the furnace, John deduced the problem was a thermal coupler. A thermal coupler, turns out, is an $8 part against which the pilot burns and the most common thing to fail in these kinds of boilers. However, he needed a 36-inch thermal coupler, and apologized profusely for not having any in the van.

I didn't hear back from John for a few days, which was a concern, so I called him Thursday morning (at 8 a.m., of course). He apologized, saying he'd lost my number but he could probably stop by on Friday. Then he mentioned having another job in the area but he'd lost his notes and wasn't sure what it was. He has a bit of an organizational problem, it would seem.

But he called and met me Friday, and less than a half-hour later the thermal coupler was installed, the boiler was purring and the house was warming up again. Considering the house had fallen below 50 degrees on cold nights, the $8 part and $60 in labor was quite a bargain.