closer to the edge in 2013-2014

So, I am not so good with not knowing/being in control of what's going on. It's mildly distressing. My nightly prayers have turned into a mess of verbal flailing and whimpering. I'm so ready for this stage to be over. I'm tired every night and sleeping like the dead, and still tired in the morning. I keep running into things about mental endurance. First it was the article on the OCR runner, and then it came up again in the trail journals I read at work.

Balls and Sunshine is my favorite. It's a father and his middle school daughter who completed the US Triple Crown: Pacific Crest, Continental Divide, and Appalachian Trail, in three consecutive years during her summer breaks. That kid is invincible.

So here's to mental endurance, and feeling like I'm this close to bonking out at all times.

It's Memorial Day, and a three-day weekend. It's also, gasp, mostly sunny! Most weekends here have been rainy, for well over a year. (The National Weather Service counted.) Naturally, I went for a run this afternoon. I took a new route, and my feet were just not freaking having it. My whole body didn't want it. This is what I get for not explicitly eating straight carbs at dinner for the last few days (I had chicken and veggies, or Mini Wheats). I did a paltry 2.79 miles, it took me 44 minutes, and when I finished I was drenched in sweat (it was not that hot or humid) and exhausted. I collapsed on the couch, had a moment of lightheadedness after my ten minutes of stretching/anaerobic exercise, and actually needed that glass of chocolate milk. There was as much fuel in me as there is in my car: about a sixteenth of a tank. It was rough.

I'm going out again on Monday. I'll eat a shit-ton of pasta today and tomorrow, and maybe I'll be able to stretch to 5 miles.

Part of it is probably that I've logged a lot more miles this week than usual, and my feet are feeling it. They need to toughen up. I'll be nice tomorrow, kill them Monday, and then they can spend the next like, 3 days or something doing yoga and friendly circuit training. (Then to Sara's wedding, which will damn well include beach time.)

How do runners go on low-to-no-carb diets!?

I mean, they probably have higher blood sugar levels than I do, but still. A few days of no pasta or bread and I start hitting brick walls left and right.

I need to give my landlord a confirmed/new departure date this coming week. I'm trying not to think about it. Sara's wedding is next weekend. I don't think/know if Aaron's coming with me, since we won't be traveling together. This sucks. I am so not getting my way right now. I have to arrange dogsitting. I'll probably have to pay out the ass for it. Maybe I'll drag Sheppy with me. Motherfucker, nothing is going right.

I got a therapy milkshake yesterday after work. In the car I had a full blinding no you can't afford the $4 or the calories stop it just go home wait no it's not that dire do not fall into that obsessive money-and-calorie-counting trap but it's not justifiable but I need to break this pattern but I barely have any gas mental tangle. Then in the drive-through, the two people in front of me were slow as balls and the woman in front of me just SAT there, burning my meager gas reserves, while she flicked garbage out her window. I was practically vibrating by time I got my partially-melted milkshake--thank you, slow as fuck selfish drivers, thank you. She stopped in the one-way exit lane and I nearly honked at her. Got home, took some Lactaid, and freaking inhaled that thing.

I have dishes and laundry to do today. Maybe that will help. Cleaning is soothing.

It's like a hot, humid day that refuses to break the atmospheric cap and storm. Frantic exercise will continue until this fucking pattern breaks.