Fall temps!

Well, highs in the mid 20s C and good cloud cover have lent a nice chill to the wind, and it feels like fall.  My favourite season (when not trumped by a superior winter)!  Fall reintroduces a poignant melancholy: I reconnect with my school-age self and my school-age fears and my school age hopes.   Will something amazing happen this year, or something dreadful or, more likely, more of the small same stuff, over and over again?  I view my former younger selves and their often puny concerns with amused pity, and yet we still share the same depth of expectation once summer ends and the distance between us narrows.  The cool weather comes, trailing the same something.  Unfortunately, as seen below, this generates some reflection.

Now, this is probably just a cool snap and we will revert to the summer weather more usual for this time of the year, but my body as well as my psyche has seized the change.  I'd written earlier about doing another diet detox last week, or maybe the week before...turns out I needed a shift in the weather to get motivated enough to give up dairy, refined sugar and carbs, and fermented things.  I eased into this two days ago.  Usually this diet lasts for ten days, but I'm aiming for 5 and 5, with a cheat day or two in between.  This weekend is a long weekend for me; I'd booked the time off well before I knew how long the heatwave would last, how it would affect me, and when it would end.  Good timing, really!  Almost! I would like to have at least one fancy meal during this long weekend, probably involving a drink or two.

I didn't buy a cleanse kit this time because I can't get the Canadian one I'd used back home, and I didn't like the last one I used here...after spending about an hour online reading reviews and whatnot, I got fed up with picking out all the weight-loss options (not my focus) or the blast-guts-clean options (definitely not my focus), and I ordered some liver and kidney detox pills instead.  Traditional stuff like milk thistle and that sort of thing.  I'm also taking more fibre, some chlorella and spirulina, and generally drinking more water and continuing to eat fresh fruits, vegs, and legumes.  This isn't necessarily going to be a vegetarian diet detox, mainly because we have some good grass-fed and organic meat in the freezer, and my new iron/protein pills are basically condensed liver, but it will be mostly vegetarian, like we usually eat.

Anyway, my new regimen seems to be working because stuff is stirred up and I'm congested and sleepy--a good sign.  One of these days, I really ought to dig into the biochemistry of this sort of thing, is detoxing really bogus, or what is going on? but usually I feel like crap for the first few days, and then I start to feel a lot better.  It feels like toxins are dredged out of secluded corners, set free to run rampant for a few days, then flushed out.  I am really really hoping that these will include whatever is still allowing the chigger bites I acquired at least three weeks ago (has it been four already?) to itch.  Some of them have healed, and I don't look like I have a gross disease so much as though I look like I'm recovering from a gross disease, but some of the spots still itch at random and inopportune times.   For example, after a whole day spent oblivious of my left thigh, I crawl into bed and it suddenly turns to prickly fire.  Or, I get into gloves, mask, booties, and gown at work and I start handling some sort of biohazardous thing that used to be inside some sick person, and then my right food begs, pleads, screams to be scratched.  My plan is to run the tough 8-mile loop on Thursday and then, if possible, do a zwow workout or something to get even more sweaty, and then sit in a hot bath and sweat even more out while I scrub off at least the outermost layer of epidermis.  At times like these, I really miss the scratchy Korean sauna mitts designed for this purpose.

Meanwhile, I have been WASTING the really nice weather!   Yesterday, I jogged 1.5 miles with the dog.  Today, I slept in late--I think I slept close to 11 hours--and after seriously contemplating avoiding all exercise, I did zwow #12 during which I included some shoulder weight exercises and deadlifts.  Oh, well, creatures generally don't exert themselves unnecessarily while shedding.

Meanwhile, I have been reading Meb Keflezighi's book:

http://www.amazon.com/Meb-Keflezighi/e/B00419KI0I

This guy has surprised me, and plenty of others--he doesn't have the best PBs of the field, and he's shown up to races not in the best form, but he fights so hard and ends placing so much better than expected.  He won the NYC marathon in 2009 or so, he won the Olympic trials, and he's placed well in other races, and he was 4th in the Olympic marathon.  He wasn't the American favourite, he was running against 3 Kenyans and 3 Ethiopians, and others with faster personal bests, but he moved up from the second chase pack, through the first chase pack which by then had splintered, from 19th or so at halfway to fourth.

He had won the silver Olympic medal in 2004 and yet was not among the runners introduced before this year's race, even though he was the only prior medalist in the field.  He used the snub as fuel.

!!!

He mentioned the book in post-race interviews and it was the first time I'd heard of it.