Eating Like a Champ

Finally I am writing this under clear skies today. For the last week it has been humid and overcast leading to a weird set of conditions where it was super foggy every morning (a point I will return to in a moment) and we saw the temperature hold steady day and night at 20C. It's so humid. One always feel sticky. Even whist sitting in the office without any movement one sweats. I don't want to complain too much because things could be worst. I could be in Tokyo. Where not only would I have to put up higher temperature and higher humidity. I would be forced to look at people in suits while doing so.

Raining Saturday and Sunday, the last of the rain cleared overnight, letting us wake up this morning to blue skies. By the end of the week we should be in the 30s again. I have mixed feelings about this; after so much wetness a spike in the temperature might make the humidity worse, but at the same time I am happy to see the sun again.

Last week I ran four mornings and each of them in the fog. Really dense fog. It was quite magical and refreshing as long as one was safe. I don't normally see much traffic on the country roads I run on, especially last week since most farming work seemed to be on pause for the weather. The dampness left my feet - which under the best running circumstances should be kept dry (hence the fancy shoes and socks) - looking a bit tired. But no one ever died from blisters. Furthermore, on the long end of an hour, other body parts are hurting much more than toes. Being not so hot for summer I did a super-human effort on Sunday - 18km. I don't know the exact time but I remember being very happy with the pace. I know for sure it was 18km because I ran out to a distance sign way in the friggn middle of nowhere saying Shikaoi was 9km away and then back again. It rained twice during that period. It wasn't too bad because all my gear is super-quick drying, super-breathable, but I've never really liked running in the rain, as refreshing as it feels, because of the whole wet foot issue again. The house was so hot I decided to take a swim in the evening again. That was 50min in the pool.

It is my working philosophy that the only way to really safely achieve this level of fitness is to eat - a lot. That's a good thing because I love food. I'm not dieting as such but to not starve myself I follow how much I eat pretty closely. I know that for someone my size, even just sitting in the office digesting and then in front of the TV drooling I can burn anywhere from 2000-2500kcal. A long run is easily over a 1000kcal and then swimming too is probably just under 1000kcal.

As a treat for lunch, and as a result of being super tired, I broke down broke down and went to 7-11, which actually has pretty good ready made food, but, as I have mentioned before, they are all super high calorie. There is a rumor they use butter fried rice for their rice balls, which would make sense because I really don't know how else one could pack 200kcals in a rice ball that small. Booya! So that was 750 calories right there. For dinner I made myself some pork curry, in which I doubled down on the pork content with both chunks of pork and lean ground pork plus carrots, onions, and for me, though not traditional, broccoli (the stems are great in curry). I had a huge portion and I can imagine that was around another 750 calories or so. Something sugary for breakfast and I hope I had enough to eat yesterday.

Another twist to such overcast and humid weather last week was that I did no laundry. Things were looking a bit bare for work this morning. On Monday I had put in a load of towels and quickly came to the conclusion the effort was futile. Nothing was going to dry inside my house or out. Happy to see the sun this morning, I was up early for a walk along the river (no run as I thought my legs deserved a break) and put in a load of laundry before I left and did another when I got back before I ate breakfast and before I left for work. I plan to throw in the towels again that have been sitting there week damp in their little drying room as they would probably pass for a science experiment at this point. Even now its so hot. Why is it so hot here? I think I we've moved to the surfact of the sun. I think my body is melting. I can barely think