July Hibernation

[El Gordo]

Great post, MLCM. I can relate to pretty much every word.

As a group, we seem especially susceptible to the slovenly demons. Our usual means of fighting back is bravado -- your November race, my May declaration, the October date with the marathon in Dublin, my claim that I'll run Almeria in under 2 hours, and so on. It's pretty effective on the whole, though it produces its own stresses of course. The mad thing is that we know just how good we feel when we're running well and feeding our bodies properly. But no matter how great things seem, those bloody sausage terrorists are always hiding just around the next corner. (My particular beautiful demons are rich Italian red wines and hunks of full fat blue cheese.)

What can I say? Total empathy, but no solution yet. I sometimes tell people that "running is the answer". And it is -- to certain questions. But the joy of a good running regime throws up other challenges. I think we've got plenty of techniques for getting us up the mountain again. Trouble is, we all tend to treat this particular peak the way we treat real-world peaks. We struggle up them, enjoy the exhilarating view for a while, then head on downwards again.

Perhaps this is what's wrong with the mountain metaphor. What we really want is to find a long plateau when we get to the top, so we can carry on, finding new vistas and new excitements at the same level.

Hmm. This is useful to me. Thank you.

In the meantime, we carry on, seeking new ideas. My latest one,a s mentioned elsewhere, is to dust down my Stratocaster and make some noise. I'm hoping it will help drown out the sausage sirens for a little while.

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Gratuitous nutritional note: lean sausages needn't be too unhealthy. The ones we buy are around 160 calories, so a couple of those with boiled or grilled veg can make a meal well under 500 cals. Perhaps you're worrying unnecessarily. It's hard to make similar rationalisations about ice cream, chips, wine, beer and full-fat cheese.

But I'll see what I can come up with.....