Up to Speed

Clearly I’ve been a slacker here for the past couple months in not posting anything new, save for race
results. I haven’t stopped updating because I’m lazy or gave up. I took a step back because I was
overwhelmed with other things. And sort of overwhelmed with “overshare” about things going on in
the world. So here’ s a few tidbits:

Being overseas: I was in Denmark for the later part of October through mid-November for work. While
there I did work stuff during workdays, then ran a half marathon over a weekend, went to Sweden for
a day, drank a lot of Tuborg, ate a lot of pickled herring, and had dinner at a military barracks converted
into a commune with pot plants out in the open. The work end of it was stressful and somedays entirely
frustrating but being able to see and experience some things in the down time was nice. While our
group was there (I was part of a group of 18 sent from the US to work on a project at our corporate HQ)
we got to experience the release of Tuborg’s Christmas beer in early November. It was a big deal. The
city all done up with blue signs announcing “Julebryg” and drunken folk walking around with blue light-
up Santa hats.

Election-related crap: I was in Denmark during the election and had voted previously by absentee
ballot. I think nearing the days up to the election I was generally not giving a flying flip about who took
home the win. I was also getting ready to bang my head against the wall at some of the ridiculous shit
flying around on social networks. If you’re going to post things, come on, do some work and actually
research the sources of what you’re throwing out. It was an election that unfortunately brought out the
worst in some people, myself included.

Running-related crap: I ran a lot in October and November. I ran too much. I finished out my last race
for the year on December 1st in Bethlehem and have not went running since. I learned having an insane
goal of running races nearly every weekend in the fall completely burnt me out, royally fucked up my
eating habits, and continued to aggravate my IT band issues. Coupled with my poor eating choices in
Denmark, my lackluster running diet contributed to weight gain and bloat. So instead of whining and
feeling sorry for myself, I went back to the gym and lifted a weight about it. I also went back to eating
low carb, which I really hadn’t been able to do with all the running. And it’s awesome. Because more
bacon, that’s why.

So there you go, that’s my absence in a nutshell, dear readers. I’m not going to make any promises
about frequency of posting but I would like to get back and write more things during my vacation from
running activities. Less running, more bacon.