Originally posted 09.30.2005

I blew off my run this morning. It would have been eight miles, probably incorporating two-thirds of the clockwise park loop and a swing around the cemetery, dawn only beginning to break in the last few miles. But I stayed in bed, in the comfort of soft cotton sweatpants and a fuzzy sweater, smooth sheets, down pillows.

Crazy, crazy girl.

It felt like taking care of myself, this counter to what most people consider productive self-care. Even worse, I skipped breakfast. No cold yogurt with frozen blueberries, chopped walnuts, a handful of granola. Just coffee in a teacup, brewed from a wasp-waisted mocha pot, four ounces, five, black as death and slightly chewy.

My little rebellion. How I’d rather live, so minimalistically. Less output, less intake. All that shopping and chopping and cooking, the vegetables and proteins and grains. It’s exhausting. And all to support one superfluous activity, marathon training. All those calories burned and I still can’t allow a scone for breakfast. So what’s the point?

I remember the bliss of that trip seven years ago, my suspension from reality, 10 days in Edinburgh during which I subsisted on a daily egg, an orange, a half-pint of Guinness, and whatever handful else. And I walked and slept. It was a regression, of course, but tempting in recollection; a deviation from the immoderation that now defines me. Always this battle between the type A and the type Zzzz.

My running shoes are in a bag at my feet, and I’ll probably attempt to make up the run late-afternoon when I’m uptown picking up the race packet for a half-marathon I don’t want to do. And the hunger will never really flood my stomach, but will only distract my head so that I nibble and nosh on whatever’s close at hand, never really satisfying. Nowhere near that egg, that orange, and that half-pint of Guinness.