three days, a half marathon, and food poisoning

today marks four weeks of sobriety. i quit drinking for a month leading up to a half marathon i'm running this sunday. what do i get for four weeks of sobriety? a case of food poisoning. a stomach that won't stop punishing me. it hit me at work and chased me out early. this is the last thing i need three days prior to running 13.1 miles. today i puked harder than drinking has made me puke in years. this feels like punishment (well, technically it is. i'm being punished for something i chose to eat today).

i could begin to go over some of my dietary choices as of late. i've been eating a lot of things with sugar in them. i'm sure this is no coincidence, more like a form of compensation for the lack of booze. i've drank more soda in the past four weeks than i probably have in the past four years. i still go to bars (almost a must if you wanna tell jokes on microphones) so i gotta drink something. i've been purchasing soda cuz i don't have the cohonas to order a juice (afraid my manhood will be judged) or a water (afraid i'll be seen as cheap which i'm not. i'm just trying not to drink. also, i always tip even when ordering water).

i'm not saying all the consumption of sugary stuff is what's brought me here. but i'm a dude who's running every other day and exercising every other day i don't run (i do usually take a day off per week to just chill out). i'm sleeping well. i take vitamins. besides the consumption of sugar, i don't do much that leaves me at risk of being a generally unhealthy person. and that's exactly how i feel... that somehow being unhealthy has lead me to this. that if i had consumed less garbage over these past few weeks, my system wouldn't be in a vulnerable place to be susceptible to this sorta thing.

and i know the words i'm typing are coming from a very uneducated place. i'm just taking shots in the dark at what could possibly be to blame. but what's the worst that can happen under this assumption? i start to consume less soda and junk food from here on in? even if that's not to blame, it's still a nice goal to shoot for. it could only do me more good than bad at this point.

right now it's 10:02pm. i don't know where this sickness is taking me. i'm tired. i hope i can sleep. i hope i can wake up and eat and not be doomed by my body to suffer much more of this. i hope i can go to work and put in a full day. i hope i can run the 3.5 miles i planned to run tomorrow, the final run i will do before the half marathon.

this half marathon is a big deal to me. i don't expect it to be a big deal to other people. that's one of the many things i love about running. it's a very selfish thing. i'm out there on my own doing my own thing. and when i complete that half marathon, i can say that i took my carcass off of  beer belly/couch potato status about five years ago and crossed a finish line that will be the longest run of my life thus far. i've been running 12 miles once a week for about the past six weeks. i know i can run that extra 1.1 miles to make it 13.1. but i don't. cuz sunday is special to me. it hasn't happened and it already means so much. i've purposely done all i can to put myself into a situation where i know i can run the distance and still be able to claim that it's the longest distance i've hit yet.

i've done a lot of thinking about this. i'm extremely proud of myself. i don't know where i'm taking my running habit after this. i've had thoughts of chilling out for the winter (chilling out still means running every other day and probably knocking my weekly 12 mile runs down to 5-7 mile runs). there's a part of me that wants to feel great after this and maybe look further down the path into running longer distances. maybe i'll keep it up with the sobriety thing or maybe i'll run and get a beer immediately following the race. i won't really know where my head's at till i'm done on sunday.

but first i gotta get to sunday. and this food poisoning nonsense is really fucking up my game.