Calling in sick on Mondays is as old as the dawn of time (time clocks, that is).

Maybe your head was still a-buzzin' just as your alarm clock followed suit, or maybe you frankly couldn't bear to face the reality of yet another week at the grind. But either way, when 9 a.m. rolled around, your humble space in corporate America turned up vacant.

But today, 26,000 health nuts had a different excuse for that Out-of-Office message on Outlook. You may know it as a little annual footrace called the Boston Marathon.

In fact, the top finishers — including the two-time Chevron Houston Marathon female winner — have already triumphantly broken through the banner, conducted their rounds of congratulatory handshakes and embraces, planted the obligatory wet kiss on their medals, and deposited their $150,000 booty in the bank (or at least their pockets). Good ol' Auntie Eyjafjallajokull be damned; touching down in Boston-Logan Airport was enough of a battle, and now they've got the accolades to show for it.

Now look. In this context, regaling you with tales of heroics in athleticism would be too easy. Just talking about the gut-wrenching adversities overcome by the wheelchair racers would send any of you reaching tearfully for a box of Kleenex.

But let's be honest. This writer's just thanking her lucky joints that she has no chance in Hades to qualify for this societally-sanctioned torture test. Because when I hear the word "marathon," I instantly do the Cement Cringe.

Not only do I detest being able to clearly locate the Point A starting line and the Point B finish line on a city map (especially if I have to loop around five thousand times through Point A on the way to Point B), my body protests the street beating it gets by demanding we cop out altogether instead.

Shin splints! Arthritis! Runner's knee! IT band syndrome! What a motley group of unwanted guests for the mildly avid runner. Fine! My legs and I will just stay home then!

Despite being surrounded by jungles of concrete in Houston (and in the vast grassland that is Texas), I somehow manage to find lily pads of trails to cushion my asphalt-averse feet.

It's 'cause I don't do the pavement pounding thing.

Nope. Sorry. Been there, done that. Road running ain't my bag, baby. I will scamper to and fro like a forest creature hopped up on ecstasy anywhere that's wooded, gravelly, and has never endured the sting of a motor vehicle's tires in its lifetime. But where the rubber sole meets the road, that's where I turn around. And go back into the wild.

A tidy fraction of a million bucks and going down in Wikipedic history? Nah. Not good enough. The glory-less existence of a struggling trail runner's life is the healthier, more gratifying life for me.