Beer Near

Back in August of 2010, my lovely and talented wife, to whom I refer on the blog as Cupcake, gave birth to our first child, an inexplicably large boy to whom I refer on the blog as Junior. Junior is healthy. Junior is cute as hell. Junior smiles and laughs a lot. For the first nine months of his life, Junior never slept. Okay…that’s an exaggeration, but not much of one. Junior never slept for more than 2-hours at a time at night. His naps topped out at 45 minutes. He would cry and scream for hours because he was so tired, but he just would not sleep. And since we were all living in a one-bedroom apartment at the time, Cupcake and I didn’t sleep either.

One of the consequences of not sleeping was, at least for me, not running. Another was eating a lot of take-out fast food. This will come as a surprise to exactly nobody, but I gained 20 pounds and completely fell apart physically. Once I got a little bit used to the not sleeping, the worst of my many aches and pains was in my lower back. It would come and go, but mostly it came and stayed. Initially I thought it was from the extra weight I was carrying (Junior), but eventually I formulated a ‘brown’ theory that it was the extra weight I was carrying (my gut). What “proved” my theory was a little experiment I did where I didn’t suck in my gut at all for a week. That was in November, and it seemed to help my back, and so operation get-svelte-again commenced. On December 1st, I was 170 doughy pounds.

At that time, Junior was doing a lot better with his night time sleeping. He would usually need me to attend to him only once or twice a night, and occasionally he would sleep solidly from 7 PM to 6 AM. Most importantly from a running standpoint, he was almost always asleep from 7:30 PM to 8:30 PM, so I could get in an hour-long run every night without worrying that I was abandoning an exhausted Cupcake to deal with Junior’s night time adventures. I managed to run 173 miles in December (on 27 of the 31 days). On January 1st, I weighed in at 166 pounds.

Normally I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. In prior years, when asked if I had any I would reply, “Yes. Keep it rolling.” This year, however, I made one. I resolved to drink no beer until I was down to 155 pounds. Immediately I made an exception. Months previously our friend Scott reserved for me a spot on the Anchor Brewery tour for January 3rd, where there was much tasting. Yay! But besides that, there was to be no delicious, frosty beer for me until I was within spitting distance of my former racing weight. This turned out to be an accidental stroke of brilliance. Besides eliminating the calories beer so wonderfully supplies, there was an additional, psychological benefit. It turns out I love beer a lot more than I love food, so the beer-fast provided powerful motivation to lose the weight as quickly as possible. Another slice of pizza? No way, mang. Gonna have me a Fat Tire in a few weeks.

In January Junior continued to improve his sleeping and I ran 206 miles (on 30 of the 31 days). At my January 29th weigh in I was 162 pounds. Four pounds in four weeks…that’s pretty good.

In February I ran every day for a total of 217 miles, with the addition of tempo runs, track work, and fartleks on the roads. The hardest day of the month for me was the 5th. Super Bowl Sunday with less than four beers doesn’t feel quite right. Super Bowl Sunday with zero beers is completely wrong. Nonetheless, it must have scored me some karma points because, when I weighed in yesterday, the red LEDs on my cheap-ass bathroom scale from Target glowed with the digits 155.0. Seven pounds in four weeks…that’s good.

It’s over a day later but I still haven’t had my celebratory beer. I got a little rambunctious on the powerlines trail due to the incredible weather. I wound up pushing pretty hard but had a great time doing so. After that, and chasing Junior around for the rest of the day, I was way too tired to properly appreciate a well-crafted ale. It sure feels good to have that option again, though.