Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Taper Crazies: I has them

I have a problem. A very real and pressing problem. I'm basically done with this season of marathon training, which for reasons not entirely clear to me was more mentally exhausting this year than in any year past. It's not uncommon for me to look forward to a run. Blow off some steam, de-stress, align some of the little ducklings of my life that may have scattered around like drunk little fools over the past week, and generally just start or end the day with a greater feeling of health and well-being than I had before I laced up my sneaks.

But this time around, a few of my weekday runs and absolutely all of my long training runs required such a gargantuan amount of emotional effort to strap on some running shoes and get out the door you'd have thought I was embarking on an odyssey of pain, sacrifice, and sexual deprivation every time I walked out my door. I've just been tired. Tired and lazy. Tired, lazy, and hungry, like, all the damn time. Also, I have Netflix. So there's that.

But I did the run. Every damn day. The track workouts and hill repeats and long runs that seemed to stretch on forever. Through the heat and the cold and the dark and the rain. In the mornings and in the evenings and in locations up and down the east coast. And, yes, every time I finished I was glad I did it and proud of the amount of me that I poured out on to the asphalt despite being tired and lazy and hungry and having an entire season of Breaking Bad waiting for me on Netflix.

That's good. What's bad is that as a result of using all of that emotional strength to get myself out the door for those runs over the past few months I seem to have exhausted all of my other self-discipline. Let's take candy for example. Now, I'll be the first to admit that sometimes I'm a shitty eater. I love donuts. But not just love the way you love pizza or ice cream or your grandmother's gravy. I fucking love donuts. I want to marry a donut. If you could be considered a successful adult while eating donuts for every meal of the day, I'd do it. But I don't. I save them as one of those once-in-a-while, I've-been-so-good-this-week treats so that when I do allow myself to have one, I go fucking bonkers. It makes my whole day. My boyfriend doesn't bring me flowers; he brings me homemade apple cider donuts from a farm stand outside of the city. The man is a genius. This, I like to think, is a healthy relationship with a shitty food.

Unfortunately for me though, I recently found myself in possession of a shit ton of Halloween candy. I probably have 15 pounds of it. Or rather, I did. Because I have been consuming this candy with the voracity of some kind of Tasmanian devil.

What started as, oh you've been working hard, go ahead and have a mini Twix rapidly escalated to me lying on my couch watching a marathon of Sons of Anarchy surrounded by a sea of crumpled candy wrappers like some kind of shameless addict. When I tell myself to have just one, for real this time that realistically means I'm about to shove five Snickers down my throat before coming up for air.

This afternoon, there was a fire drill in my office building. I walked out calmly with the masses of people and a few minutes later walked back in with a cookie the size of my head. I made the mistake of walking into Quincy Market to stay out of the cold and when I did, I saw it. The cookie the size of my head. All round and sugary and covered in artificially flavored candies. I had to have it. And oh, I had it.

I have absolutely no self-control. If I see it, it's going into my mouth. Bow. It's like I see chocolate, black out, and snap to just in time to realize I'm already sucked into that downward spiral of self-loathing for the rest of the night because what is wrong with you?! You fucking animal. Eat a goddamn banana or something. Why is this so hard?! Use some self-control, you monkey. The next thing you know you're going to be throwing your poop against the wall and peeing in the corner. I assume that's the next step of candy binging.

I've even taken to hiding the rest of my leftover Halloween candy stash thinking that as long as I don't see it, I won't eat it. But you know what the problem with hiding candy from yourself is? You know where it is, you idiot.

I'm not even going to get into the booze I've been consuming lately because the last thing I need on my plate tonight is to field a phone call from my mother about destructive life choices. There's been a lot of weddings recently, okay? I've given up drinking no less than three times in the past month. I'm on it.

The fact of the matter is, the closer I've come to the marathon, the further I slide. I'm a few days out from the race right now and feeling downright infantile in regards to basic life choices this week. My wardrobe is becoming increasingly questionable. I'm wearing a mustard yellow corduroy vest right now and I don't know how I feel about it. I don't KNOW where I want to eat lunch, there's just too much PRESSURE. And JESUS CHRIST I'M OUT OF MILK AGAIN WHAT IS GOING ON THERE JUST ISN'T ENOUGH TIME I CAN'T EVEN.

In regards to traveling down from Boston to Philly, the most practical first step would be for me to get my car to my boyfriend's apartment this evening so we can leave directly after work tomorrow. But that would require packing for the marathon tonight and when I realized that last night, it triggered a panic spiral until I was sitting on my tub at midnight brushing my teeth and frantically texting my boyfriend that I CAN'T POSSIBLY BE EXPECTED TO DO THAT BECAUSE SPORTS BRAS AND GU PACKS AND HAVE YOU SEEN THE WEATHER FORECAST LIFE IS FUTILE.

So yeah. The Taper Crazies: I has them. Pretty sure this year they're going to result in a 10-pound weight gain and impromptu purchase of that faux fur romper I saw in H&M last night because clearly juggling a marathon training routine, good judgment, and basic human decency is just too much to ask this time around. I gave myself the nervous sweats just writing this blog post.

See you on the other side, folks. I was just about to write some asshole runner jargon about PRing or bust for this race that I just trained my ass off for but then I had another nightmarish flashback to my last Philly Marathon and GUH. But I'm gonna go out there and give it my damnedest. Fuck that. If I don't PR in this marathon I'm going to be very disappointed in myself blow a fucking gasket. Marathoning is so fun, you guys, I swear.

andy-dwyer-running

1 comment:

RuthWells said...

Hey, girl. Knock 'em dead. And eat all the donuts you want; you've earned them.

LinkWithin

Blog Widget by LinkWithin