Checking In

You know what I love about starting running again? The optimism. The blind faith that you can pick up exactly where you left off months before. It's especially acute when you read about the amazing accomplishments of other people (Hi, Forest!). Not only do you think you can run as fast as you could before, you somehow ball them into your dreams and assume you'll just run as fast as they do, too.

Needless to say, I'm slower.

It's not my fault though. When we got married, Tessa took my name (kinda) and I took two behemoth legs made of concrete because we couldn't find anything blue. If I had my old, svelte yet muscular calves, then I'm sure I could keep kicking ass. As it stands, I'm happy just to be logging miles. Which, I'm sure, is how it should be in the grander scheme of things.

BUT, I'm not logging them as quickly as I thought.

If you dial back to last week's post, you will note the aforementioned enthusiasm with which I claimed I would run 25+ miles a week starting, oh say, now. I even set up a goal to run 80 miles in four weeks! I figured if I could do it before I drank all of Italy's wine and ate all of their gnocchi while doing nothing else but nap, then I should be able to do it twice as easy afterwards. Bad math, I guess.

Anyway, I'm somewhere in the gray area now. I'm not at square one, but I'm not on whatever square I used to be on, either. I might not even be "on" a "square". I do know that I felt comfortable enough running today that I experimented with my food. After reading entries from both Don and Forest about eating more while running, I decided to eat a giant bratwurst covered in mustard before I ran five miles today. It was singularly amazing how quickly it turned into a cinder block. I have never felt my stomach really do that sort of thing before, and there aren't really words for it. If I could describe it in colors, it would be an orange kind of pain. But after the first couple of miles, I do admit I felt fresher. In fact, I got a lot faster as the run went on. This means that either A) It got easier to run because I stopped cramping, or B) The much-needed bratwursty nutrients passed through the sausage casing and straight into my quads, giving me the energy I needed to be the best runner I could be.

We all know I like to play loose and silly with the scientific method, but this was obviously a case for the latter.

Next test: Spaetzle covered in cheese with some Leibniz cracckers.