Milestone

Yesterday I ran 3.55 miles at the gym. This, in and of itself was no big achievement. That's not the point of today's entry.

The point is......... that I've ran over 100 miles since January 1st, 2006.

I've been keeping track of all of my mileage in the gym, and I'm fairly pleased, given that I've been away from the gym for 2 weeks this year during my ski vacations(which did not keep me conditioned, somehow), and out for yet another week feeling under the weather for working out.

Unfortunately, about 90 miles has been on a treadmill. I hate treadmills. There's such little inspiration to work hard on one--like watching Jeopardy and Ricky Martin videos could inspire anyone. True inspiration is being 3 miles from home and telling yourself that you wouldn't dare walking home.

My longest run yet this year was 8.26 miles....mapped out for you right here. I pulled this off on saturday in a little over an hour.

I hope to reach 365 miles this year on foot. That's a good number, no?

Hangovers

Hangovers for me start early in the morning when I wake up dehydrated. And while stumbling towards the sink, I usually decide in my half-consciousness that I don't want to be alive. You're so dehydrated that your knee and elbow joints actually creak like an old hardwood floor. On the way I might stop by at the bathroom to rid myself of the 6 martinis still slam dancing about in my bladder. I often ponder just how my body can change gin into gasoline, because that's what it feels like.

Back to bed as soon as possible after drinking the local aquifers dry, I usually pass out a second time. So fast that I'm out before my face meets pillow, and I collapse into a awkward position that will cause an arm to get cut off from circulation, and it will be completely numb & limp by the time I wake up again.

When I wake up with the alarm, I begin to believe that someone, perhaps Chuck Norris, spent the night repeatedly kicking me square in the forehead. This feeling usually transcends two very stiff cups of coffee. The saturation of alcohol on my breath makes me scan my memory of the night before to see if it contains me open mouth kissing a top-fuel dragster.

And the gas. Low in quantity but high in potency, I think it's possible that the secret ingredient in Herkimer's sweet potato fries is weapons grade plutonium. Mmmmmm.

After coffee number 4, I've burnt off most of the acute symptoms, but the glaze will stay for the rest of the day. This is where you almost feel normal, but your brain is fogged over like your windshield on a spring morning. You can sorta see where you're going, but everything is sort of fuzzy & distorted. This state of being is strange, because time can either move quickly or slowly. It moves slowly when you think of your bed. However, once you get back to your desk and stare wide eyed at your monitor, you watch time click off so fast that 30 minutes can pass in between eyeblinks. And a complete time travel experience can occur when your boss is giving you critical action items: complete sentences are lost into a space-time vortex. Yawns frequently outlast the amount of air in your lungs, which makes you kind of gag. The first four words in the sentences that come out of your mouth are usually the same as the last four words are the same as the first four words.

This surreal state makes any semblance of critical thinking nearly impossible, but it is very possible to be productive in this realm. In the course of a normal day, interruptions by incompetents is the greatest factor of not-getting-anything-done-ness, but all it takes is a split second stare with your vacant soulless eyes to send hellish fear into your interrupter. Even the people on the phone.

Driving home usually takes about 3 or 4 eternities. Everyone moron on the road is driving way too slow. or those motherfuckers are driving way too fast, cutting you off. I just want to get to my couch. Please?


I got a good hour nap in this afternoon before I had to drive back out to Chanhassen for my first Triathlon training class at Lifetime. We spun for 50 minutes, and then ran for another 30. I didn't feel too bad.

I still feel kinda crappy. I'm going to bed.

Intuition

I've never been able to trust my intuition, particularly when it comes to deciphering the difference between what people are saying and what they are thinking.

Early last week, I could tell I was not being told the entire truth, and I decided that the speech patterns, the non verbals, and the overall scent in the air were completely illusions fabricated in my head. Which is what I do 99 percent of the time when my instincts are trying to tell me something. It is certainly possible for intuition to be wrong, but I have a feeling now that I've been right way more often than I've been wrong.

I'm beginning to understand that I've always had a keen sense of all this, but I'm absolutely nonplussed by my reluctantance to accept the jumping-up-and-down observations of my subconscious/id. I guess the cognitive dissonance of knowing that someone you trust is not being candid with you is difficult to accept.

I think the silver lining to this is that I should have the common sense to trust myself before anyone else. So I'm gonna work on doing just that. Sad that I'm nearly 27 years old and figuring this shit out just now.

Nothing like clarity on a rainy day.