April Taxes

Picture this: Spring 1994. Diane, the matriarch of the Mellem household, woke then-17 year old Ryan up at 3 am to get him ready to board the Havre Blue Pony travel bus. In Montana we travel long distances for sports. So, at 4 am the Blue Pony Express left the station headed for a golf tournament 4 hours away. Being the thoughtful and loving parent that she was (she also ruled the house with an iron fist and could smell alcohol a mile away. My friends called her “The Bloodhound”!) she made me a lunch and a toaster strudel. One of those Pillsbury jelly-filled little slices of heaven with diabetes inducing sugar icing drizzled on top. Ryan, all cool and shit, rushed out the door, strudel in hand, with mom yelling “Good luck, I love you” or something that loving parents say. 17 year old Ryan (who literally knows everything) doesn’t really acknowledge her and rushes to meet his buddy who’s waiting in the driveway to drive to the highschool and get ready to hit the road. Just before stepping into the passenger’s seat, Ryan launches said strudel up onto the spear-grass and sagebrush covered hillside behind our house. Little did I know that Diane was watching from her bedroom window as I catapulted my breakfast pastry into the cold dark night. No good deed goes unpunished they say and Diane’s good deed was sitting 50 feet up that godforsaken hillside. Somewhere in the vicinity of 8 pm, I return home, winner of the tournament and overall feeling pretty damn important. “How’d you play?” she says. “Great. I won AGAIN”, I reply. “Well, dinner is on the table”, Diane replies. Rounding the corner, I gaze upon the table and there sits my toaster strudel in all of its nasty glory. Cheatgrass, dirt, sagebrush leaves, dead insects, etc. you get the gist, sticking out of it like the coronavirus of danishes. “Bon appetit you little shit” she says. And with that mic drop, Diane taught me that all actions have consequences which brings us to the April challenge.

This month’s challenge is to run or bike 5% of your total mileage (mileage from 1/1/22 to 3/31/22) of your highest mileage discipline (running or biking) in ONE activity (yep ONE activity. To you overachievers...You’re Welcome).

For instance: if you’ve ran 500 miles and biked 600 miles (200 running miles equivalent), you have to RUN 5% of your running miles (i.e. 500 x 0.05 = 25 miles).

If you’ve ran 100 miles, but biked 600 miles (200 running equivalents), you have to BIKE 5% of your biking miles (i.e 600 x 0.05 = 30 miles).

Once you have COMPLETED the challenge, sign up for the event and don’t forget to tag @Josh Pierce and @Ryan Mellem in the comment section of your run. The winner will be drawn at random for the monthly prize. Reach out if you have any questions. As always, have fun, be safe, and anything worth doing is worth overdoing.