Day 11

I am haunted by past cheeses, that first bite of Epoisses, the perfect Saint-Andre someone brought to one of our cheese potlucks, the crystallized salt tang of a 6 year old Gouda...actually, most of the cheeses I've been craving have been of the creamy and slightly (or more than slightly) odoriferous type, although I'm also missing Parmesan on popcorn. Since our snack options are limited, we have been eating a lot of popcorn, which can be a healthy snack with grapeseed oil and a bit of turmeric or fenugreek...I've been experimenting, but nothing can take the place of Parmesan!

Please excuse the withdrawal pangs. One more day! We might end the detox diet tomorrow evening if we go out.

Anyway, I (mostly) jogged 3ish miles with the dog this morning. It's taken this long to realize that the creek path has two ends and starting an out-and-back run at the end that isn't on the other side of a large hill is easier. really? I can't believe I haven't thought of this earlier, particularly since that end is closer to my house. It makes for a shorter run, and the entrance isn't as dramatic, but it's easier. We jogged around a bit elsewhere too for kicks.

This evening, I returned to the treadmill. I decided I was going to run for an hour and take water breaks every 20 min--this treadmill looks like the great great great grandmother of all other treadmills, and its disconcertingly shallow cup holder has missed out on a few generations of progress, so I have to keep my water bottle on the floor and stop the treadmill to drink. This is ok.

I turned the music and hopped on. The CD in the player is still the Spacemonkeyz thing which has a nice mellow beat and tracks of approximately 5 minutes in length; halfway through the first track, I took off my stopwatch and dropped it on the floor. No numbers! None! New game! I would run until the CD ran out, and I would bump up the TM speed a notch with each new track until it started to get uncomfortable or whatever. The treadmill has a knob which slides up and controls the speed from 0 to ?, and it's a continuum. It's not 0.25 min/mile or whatever faster, it's just faster; I don't know if the thing follows a linear equation even. I was embarking on a voyage of sensation and I would feel the difference. I had no idea how long the CD was nor how many tracks there were; no matter, I would concentrate on how I felt, and not how much more I had to run. And never mind stopping for water, that wasn't an option now. I had to keep going.

My legs were heavy at the beginning but after 4 or 5 tracks, I was feeling pretty good. I'm slowly finding my comfort zone on the treadmill, which feels biomechanically smoothest in the middle of what is labelled "Fat Burn". How fast or slow this is, I have no idea except that it feels sort of around 9 min/mile (or 8 min/mile when I'm feeling really good), still comfortable, still easy, but a little more push than wafting along at 11 min/mile or whatever I do when I'm feeling especially undriven.

I got to the middle of "Fat Burn" by the 7th track and I stayed there until the 10th. Something about that speed felt very comfortable. And then I figured I should slow down a bit and cool off, loosen up, but this imperilled comfort and so I pushed the speed back up to almost where it had been.

And then, sometime within the 12th track, the mental wheels started to loosen. Just how long is this CD? Worst still, there was a false end in the middle of the 12th track, and once the music restarted, I could not relax. I kept looking back at the CD machine timer. How long is this track going to be? Where the heck are we? That feeling of following a route for the first time which develops a disorientating elasticity, but with music. The longest song ever. My mouth was becoming pretty dry.

Sorry for all of the cheese withdrawal-induced italics.

Well, track 12 finally ended after more than ten minutes, and with it, the CD. I was not prepared. I stopped the treadmill, picked up my watch, saw that I was about a minute shy of 70 minutes, and resumed tread milling at the slowest jog-walk ever. 70 minutes! I think that's the longest I've ever been on a TM.

I'm counting that as 7 miles. I drank some water finally and it tasted so good. Now, if plain old lukewarm water that's been sitting in a plastic bottle for hours can taste that good after only 70 minutes of self-denial, how good is cheese going to taste after 12 days? I hope I don't take a bite and taste nothing but bacteria, the veil cruelly ripped asunder and so forth. Lots of things have gotten ruined by a revisit after a hiatus. I used to love love love blue raspberry flavour, for instance, but the last time I tasted it, I was reminded of scented markers and making a banana-scented ester via distillation and recrystallization and other steps in a lab with a fair share of stained glassware and chemicals that came from bottles that looked older than I. Please, let cheese not be on the list of disillusionment.

My husband has a lot of CDs that I haven't heard; I might be exploring other soundscapes in the future. The idea of running until the CD ends appeals to me for some reason; I guess it supplies some of the discovery that the treadmill does not provide.