Withdraw

I guess there are withdraws from several angles right now, physical, mental, emotional. The most physically exhausting one is caffeine. The past two days I've been drinking yerba mate, a type of S. American tea, instead of coffee, and I just feel dead. I didn't by a whole lot, but I do have some other tea lying around and I wonder if I should try to continue and get over this caffeine hump. I DO NOTNOTNOTNOTNOT want to give up coffee; it's so darn good. But maybe I'll switch to decaf or the half-caf/half-decaf.

And am I going through withdraw from meat/dairy? Hard to tell. I don't feel out of whack from that. I'd been doing fine for a couple of weeks; till now but I'm sure that's from the caffeine. Eating more legumes has been.... ergh.... well.... yeah.... but I also know running when it's warmer does a number on the GI tract.

I'm still finalizing my training plan, but I see it coming together. This weekend I laid out a general plan, and Monday I started on a build week (meaning 10-11 mile weekdays runs). I also plan to incorporate more high-intensity training, of varying sorts, and see how it improves my races. Since I have a longer training cycle, my plan is to incorporate "quality" weeks after each two weeks of "build" before a week of "recovery." I call this barbeque-r (BBQ-R; get it?!). Essentially the quality week will have a long run; probably less than the build weeks, longer than the recovery weeks, but having a specific focus for producing better mental focus and physical capacity over longer distances.

I can already tell the difference from increasing my mileage. Before I could get wiped out by a run but be recovered by the next morning. Now, I may only sort of get wiped out and I'm dead. It reminds me that I really need to focus on QUALITY recovery; and I'm really trying to maximize that nutritionally.

I'm trying to put more into my work. I don't think I'm doing what I want to be doing, but that doens't mean I should troll along. I should still try to be "fuckin' awesome." Nevertheless, I have a great motivator that give me the drive to start NOW to pursue the things I want. There are still some unknowns, but I that if I start moving, things will build up steam.

Soundtrack:
"The Precipice" by The Classic Crime
"Dive" by Disciple