On the Friday that I finalized my divorce, I picked up a pack of cigarettes at the gas station on the way home and proceeded to smoke one on the porch before I went to pick my kids up early from school to get ice cream. Over the last two weeks or so, I proceeded to smoke the rest of the pack and don’t plan on buying another anytime soon. I’ve always had this push and pull between building up the body and tearing it apart at the same time, something transgressive that I could do if I wanted to and leave whenever I felt like it. Doesn’t make the most sense for me as an athlete but there is a self-destructive tendency in myself that I see in other endurance athletes as well. Full disclosure, I try to not give in to self-destructive tendencies as a rule but sometimes there has to be a release valve before things go fully off the deep end.

That said, I’m going dry for most of December for the simple reason that I do most of my drinking alone (as a matter of convenience more than anything) but I’m training for a new race in January and I want to see what cleaning things up in that department would do for my ability to train harder when I don’t have a lot of time for long runs between kids and timing races. I did get some longer runs stacking up this week and will hopefully get some tomorrow at some point between errands for Isle du Bois and picking the kids up. I basically have started running longer on weeknights since I can’t always get it in on the weekends. I got an entry to Bandera 50k and need to find a 100k between now and April.

I was out running this weekend and ran into my buddy in the neighborhood pulling out. He rolled his window down and mentioned he was on the way to see his mom in the hospital. Next day I was running after timing down at Bachman Lake and saw him again on the way to drop some things off. I was having a shitty run, probably in no small part due to my briefly rekindled smoking habit, and he drove by and mentioned things were in a better way than they were the day before. I was thinking about how random it was that I ran into him twice in two days, he also expressed some interest in the serendipity of the moment. I don’t believe in the supernatural but it was uncanny that I was in the right place at the right time for things to happen the way they did.

I’m going to try and write more often, at night when I’m alone it is too easy to just let things fall apart and hopefully writing will keep me honest. I also picked up my guitar again after a month or so, busy days and nights pulled me out of that habit. I also got in a good climb on Wednesday before the social run. Trying to stay focused going into the holidays.