We're home for a brief stop. Friends visiting from DC. A surprise birthday party for an old friend. Laundry and gardening, work, and general home-town life. Also, it is fall. It is cooler, the morning is dark when I wake, and the leaves have all fallen on our street.
Last week, despite a complete lack of effort to hit any mileage goal on my part, I managed to put 19.6 miles-ish on my feet (including 3.5 miles of biking and an hour of gardening, which I counted as 1 mile Running Equivalent). Other than the track workout, there was nothing to write home about other than a Bikram class, which put me at 5/10 classes on this 10 class card. If I try really hard, I *may* actually use all of the classes on this card before it expires... that would be a new experience.
I have no races on the calendar, but, thanks to laziness and the awesomeness that is Spanish food, quite a few pounds on the scale that need to disappear. So, for the first time in a long time, I find myself actually being much more disciplined about my diet than my mileage.
In the 9 days since we've been state-side I've lost 6 pounds -- turns out, diet discipline is way more important than work-out discipline when it comes to managing weight. I'm a natural born eater. I can eat an extra 1,000 calories without blinking, *and* if you ask me to do a workout that burns 1,000 calories, you can guarantee I'd come home from it hungry and ready to replace the loss.
I'd love to say I'm just going to stay this disciplined food course 'til I hit the illusory goal I keep in the back of my brain as the "ideal to start training for a BQ" weight, but of course, that's crazy. There's just life in general with all of its awesome food, plus the trip to China, where I plan to eat anything and everything delicious that crosses my path, plus all of the holiday travel and parties. So, instead, I'll be honest with myself -- now that I'm back below my personal red line and within striking distance of reasonable, I'll probably trend back up towards the red line and will be resuming the disciplined approach in early January, along with the rest of the first world.
Today, I hit up the Bikram room again. As always, it was a struggle and I desperately wanted to go outside for some cool fresh air for every single minute from 60 minutes to 90 minutes. I am a heat wuss. Bikram is such a mental workout for me. Yes, it's a great physical workout. But, truly, the mental struggle to stay in that hot room is a new and difficult battle I wage with myself in every class. Today, it was close, but I stayed in the room. Next time... who knows.
For much of this year, E and I have been spending one night a week in SF when we're in town. His company has an office here he needs to make appearances at, and I have more clients here than down the peninsula these days. The best part of these weekly visits is the date night dinners and the views from the hotels (see above and below).
Tonight, we got to take an old friend out for his birthday dinner at Fringale. Oh, man. This is a perfect example of why San Francisco's restaurant scene is so amazing. It reminded me of so many bistros in France. No reservations. We showed up around 7 and were seated to enjoy a delicious 2.5 hour meal with amazing service and overly delicious food, wine, coffee, and cheese. (As you can see, my meal discipline is not even strong enough to deal with SF, much less the true international temptations, although, in all honesty, French food is much easier to enjoy in moderation than many other options...)
Going forward, without a race on the calendar, I'm completely free to alternate Bikram, walking, hiking, running, biking, and any other activities that make sense for me. For example, I'm running in SF along a street with many stoplights to a breakfast meeting tomorrow. I'll give myself 45 minutes to go 3 miles. I'll call it a fartlek or intervals and I'll push it on the non-trivial hills. I love that I have the freedom to do this -- that I don't have an assigned workout -- that all I have to do tomorrow is transport myself between meetings and do my best to be disciplined and healthy. At the end of the day, after running to breakfast and walking between my other meetings, I'll likely hit 5+ miles. It will be a great day and I feel privileged to have it on my agenda.
It's good to be home.
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