I did it.
It took me months, gave me Christ knows how many blisters, took damn near everything I had mentally, but
I did it. You're looking at 30 minutes at an 8 min/mile pace followed by a five minute cooldown.
I'm not proud of it - pride leads to complacency, and complacency leads to death. That might sound melodramatic, but I believe it.
Still-
There's a Theodore Roosevelt speech I'm fond of at times like these. The Navy likes it so much they print an excerpt from it at the end of Reef Points, the handbook given to incoming midshipmen. It's called "Citizenship in a Republic", and its most famous excerpt is this:
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
Weights are next.
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