Drank a bloody Red Bull again tonight! Awards night at the running club, I ordered a Red Bull zero sugar and was buzzing like I was tripping my rocks off afterwards. Just one! Even when I got home the wife pulled me aside and asked if I had been drinking or taking drugs because I was acting weird. No, it was just a Red Bull!
So no more of that crap, 2 hours later and I'm still sitting here wide eyed and grinning like the Cheshire Cat! But hey, where it would usually be beer & tequila, now I need to find pleasant alternatives so through trial and error, RB being an error, I'll figure out some regular options to order. I also had a Grapetizer, which is very nice, but way too much sugar so not a long term option. We need to not replace alcohol with sugary drinks, sugar is almost as much a poison to our bodies as alcohol, replacing one deadly poison with another kinda defeats the point, we may as well just do it properly and drink whiskey and Coke, or vodka and Red Bull, throw in some heart stopping caffeine just for an even higher risk of premature death!
I was a little bit worried at the club tonight, to be honest. One of the things my running club does at awards evenings, bear in mind my running club, West Coast Athletic Club, is the "drinking club with a running problem", is to dish out 'fines' in the form of shooters, usually tequila or apple sours or something in between. I have had a few in recent months, for silly things like finishing my first 50km ultra looking too strong. I was worried about getting one tonight, and having to publicly decline and then have to explain to however many nosy parkers demanded an explanation afterwards, but I was lucky, no fines for me this week. There were plenty of others though, ranging from a new pair of lovebirds being too affectionate in club photos, a guy with a bruised face from hitting the pavement, a lady who's drunk dancing was embarrassing... it's all for a laugh among the more serious awards for actual running achievements. All in all a fun evening, and I stayed sober of course. Some friends asked how it's going, they seemed impressed at my 23 days, as they sipped their wines, etc.
I must confess, I did miss the booze at times this evening, not badly, but a beer or wine would have been pleasant. Or so that addiction within was having me think about.
Nothing else really interesting happened in my day today, or since the last blog. I do apologise again for my bad mooood yesterday, it was just one of those downer moments. My tooth and ear feels better today, not such a pain, which has helped the mood improve. Also, the guy who's bought my pool table will pay me for it this week and come to collect it next weekend so I can finally clear out that room. It may require a hired trailer to cart all the crap in there to the municipal dump, and then it can take shape as a clear, comfortable corner of peace and relaxation, exercise and study. Once it is set up there will be rules, rules which will be enforced. Namely, any stuff that gets dumped in there will be considered as rubbish and transferred to the big outside bin, I don't give a crap what or who's stuff it is! The space will be for everybody to use, within the boundaries which I will set, as the man in this house I insist those rules will not be negotiable!
As for the running, it seems my lazy days are going to come to an end soon. Summer is creeping closer so the days are getting gradually longer and ever so slightly warmer. I did not run at club tonight, I simply didn't make it in time, which was the perfect "reason" to not have to run in the miserable cold windy rainy weather on the beachfront. However our club captain did announce some interesting new training programs run by external professional coaches for club members starting up soon including multi-day training sessions per week with a mix of intervals, fartleks, speed, hills, track work and long runs on weekends. This is brilliant, exactly what I need, besides my usual just going out and racking up the mileage mostly chasing medals at races! I need, rather desperately, a lot more technical and particularly speed training. I can pound out the long distances but I'm still far too slow, I need to get quicker and fitter.
I'm really excited actually, with these coached training sessions and more early morning runs as it warms up, and of course never losing training time to hangovers, my running is going to vastly improve and quite fast. New goals will be set with bigger and more difficult accomplishments reached! Eg. my fastest 10km is 52 minutes, I want to train to pull off 45 minute 10km's consistently in this year, and crack a marathon within 4 hours. My best marathon time is 4h39m in Feb this year.
At the moment it's difficult to make it to the weekday evening training sessions due to family transport responsibilities, but the wife starts a new job in September which she will catch a bus to so I'll be free to go strait from work to training, which will be awesome!
Anyway, I'm just waffling here! Good night folks, I'm off to see if I can get to sleep through the buzz of this Red Bull, might have to tape the eyelids shut and whack my head against the wall...
