SUP MOTHERS. So, yeah. I disappeared there for a while, to be sure. This was due to basically being so busy I barely had time for sleep, let alone blogging.
What did I do while AWOL? Well, I've been going to EMT class two nights a week and all day Sunday, plus another class Wednesday, plus doing my Moksha correspondence course, plus my full-time job, plus--oh yeah--training for a marathon. It definitely got ridiculous for a while there.
Did I run the marathon, you ask? Indeed I did! It was difficult, long, and painful, but ultimately really fun and rewarding, with a crowd of spectators that made it an incredible, memorable experience. Somewhere around Mile 20 I told myself I would never, ever run one again, but then when I finished I felt the sort of motivation one gets after a dress rehearsal--namely, now that I've done sort of a "practice" marathon, I know so much more about training and racing strategy that I want to do another one just because I think I can improve by about a million percent. But we'll see. It's the training, not the race itself, that makes me hesitate. I honestly do not believe that the training was healthy for my body and I'm wary of undergoing that kind of physical stress--not to mention the time commitment--again.
Right now the only thing on my radar is the April 2012 Tough Mudder in PA. My firefighter friends talked me into joining their team, and I am simultaneously enthused and terrified. I mean, there is FIRE. Walls to scale. Tunnels to crawl through. An ELECTRIFIED FENCE. It's all so extreme. The plus side is, training for it requires less in the way of boring, cortisol-jacking long miles of running, and much more in the way of... sprints, intervals and strength, i.e. Crossfit and Bodyrock, my two loves! So I'm looking forward to training far more than I was for the marathon (by the end of marathon training I was so goddamn bored of the miles, so exhausted, and had actually gained weight because of the cortisol + necessary carb increase, that in desperation I just did intervals on the treadmill for the last two weeks of training).
Food-wise, I've been slowly bringing myself back to normal after the three or so weeks of carb-loading I did pre-marathon. My version of carb-loading was pretty Primal-friendly, but I did let it all go a few days before and after, eating tons of white rice, rice noodles, sweet potatoes, bananas, chocolate, etc. I still managed to stay off the wheat pretty well, but it was definitely binge city. The day after the marathon was the worst. I woke up STARVING to the extent where my bran was actually fuzzy and disoriented. I went to Silver Diner and ordered the thing on the menu that seemed to have the most calories, scarfed it all, and felt much better. Then three hours later I was starving again. The cycle continued with giant meals periodically throughout the day, and me feeling like I just could NOT get enough food. I think I probably ate around 4,000 calories, all told. It was insane.
After a few days of wonkyness my eating has returned pretty much to normal. There has been a lot of pie around the fire station lately, though (part of a long-standing tradition when a probie becomes a full-fledged EMT) which has been bad for my willpower.
That's where things are, in a nutshell. I'm thrilled to be getting back to interval training and good eating. I'm scared as shit about Tough Mudder. I still have very little free time, but the marathon being done has freed up some blogging time.
(Also, I got an iPad, which makes blogging that much more fun. That might be factoring into my renewed efforts.)
The end.
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