Tired, Fat, and My Brain Hurts

Been really quiet this week for no good reason. Life is more of the same I guess but a few things of note I can talk about, though it's generally more of the same old, same old, kind of thing. Friday and I'm pretty happy to see the end of the week come. I'm exhausted.

I'm doing something wrong on the exercise and nutrition front. I worked from home Tuesday and went out for an afternoon ride after lunch only to blow up like I've never blown up before. I was so wasted I cut the workout short, something I haven't done all year. It's not something I do much at all, in any circumstances. To have it happen when I'm supposed to be at some sort of peak fitness is troubling.

Also, I'm out of control with my weight and eating. Today I hit 197, which is the highest I've been since 2006. It's not a good development at any time, let along 2 days before the first race of the season. I'm beginning to get very frustrated with everything, and have little to no desire to bother with any of this shit any more. Without question the vacation plus hangover has shot me physically in any number of ways. My hunger is out of control, motivation is lacking, and the scale is there as an objective measure of this.

Then there's the flip side, where on my good days I'm riding 2-3 mph faster than a year ago. Also, I was forced to start wearing my smallest khaki pants for work this week and they fit the same as 11 pounds ago. I'm also wearing one of the shirts that run snug, and the clothes don't really seem much tighter than before vacation. Plus, I don't feel like I'm eating any more than before vacation. Before the trip there were days I would go to town with a spoon on a jar of peanut butter. Now, I'm not doing that so much and here I am blimping out. It's all very annoying, let me say. To top that off, I'm probably short 2 hours of sleep every single night, and when the alarm goes off I feel hungover more often than not.

I could cry and whine some more but it's not going to do me any good. I'm just at a point where I don't know WTF to do. It seems like I've crossed back over some magical metabolism line where I seem to not be burning as much as I was before the trip. Are my eating choices that bad? Or are my workouts that little that I'm burning that few calories? I don't know, but when I see 197 it makes me want to punch the wall. As I sit here at work I have a pounding headache.

So this weekend's race, I expect nothing. Maybe I should just say fuck it and drink beer all weekend. It seems like I'm stuck in a Chinese finger lock, where the harder I try the worse off I am. I legitimately thought I was going to see 194 or 195 this morning. That it was a +2/3 just deflates the fuck out of me. Might as well just enjoy the bagel and cream cheese if I can't make any progress with the almonds and fruits and veggies, of which I'm up to about 9 servings a day now. I mean, how the fuck do you gain weight this much when you eat 9 fucking servings of fruits and veggies a day? It's fucking absurd. And it's not like I feel good. I feel like ass. I'm tired, fat, and my brain hurts.

I'm usually good at just letting the world be, letting it tell me what to do. Maybe I need this? I don't know why, or for what. Maybe I'm going to kick ass this weekend and it's going to illustrate that I don't really need to worry so much about those extra 10 or 15 pounds. But I doubt it. I suspect I'm going to have trouble with the last 10-25 minutes of the race, struggling to knock it out when all is said and done. I'm really toning things down to the simple combination of not crashing too hard, and trying to enjoy myself as much as possible while wearing spandex in the woods. I hope I don't lose, but at this point I don't even know if I should expect that much.