Getting a Little High Then Overdosing

          Darn it! I was editing a draft of this post when the Polaris Office word processor app crashed and took all the edits with it, and just as I was getting in a flow. Unfortunately, it didn't autosave the work so I have to start all over. Believe me, that lost document was much better than this.

          Puff, puff, pass. If only it were that. It's feels more like huff, and puff, and pass out. Running can feel so rough when you haven't been doing it for awhile. Waking up with what are now daily aches and pains doesn't help any. I had one of those days and even considered not running that day, even though I had been looking forward to it in the days preceding.  But hey, I figured I ran three days ago in the afternoon after working 2 night shifts, I should be able to at least try running again after having the night off. So I laced up my running shoes and got out the door just planning on putting one foot in front of the other for what I hoped was at least 30 minutes. After all I had to work off the overdose of red velvet cookies I had the night before. That was my first overdose (darn it Von's, stop putting those things on sale!!!).

          Well, it was one of those runs that the body never got out of warm-up mode. The muscles and joints never loosened, the breathing was labored all the way, and hitting a good stride never happened. You've heard of a working stiff? Well, I looked like a plodding stiff. Remember when running used to be called jogging? Can I claim to have discovered a new aerobic workout named plodding? How can you look good while running very slowly? Right now there is no way and it's just plain running ugly. Since when did a gentle rise in the road not feel so gentle anymore? I used to attack those things. Attacking hills or even the flat road doesn't exist in my running vocabulary anymore due to a certain amount of fear of getting injured. I would have to be constantly in a 'protect mode'. While on this plodding workout, I saw a school bus full of children who were probably thinking "gee mister, you're so slow". Heck, I didn't care. After all, I was out plodding. And a tough plod it was. I should train my brain to think that every run is a good run regardless of how tough it is. If there is one advantage of running at glacial pace, it is that I am reaching distances much shorter than before, so it doesn't take long before I have to turn around and run back home.

          Hard days and easy days? Ha! They are all hard days. If I ran any slower, I'd be as good as stationary. My arm carriage is so high, it's like having a permanent shoulder shrug. Not very efficient or loose at all. Even with all that difficulty, I went out plodding again two days later and lasted for a full hour! What a hard way to get high. But it wasn't that which made me high, although it helped. It was checking my exercise log and seeing that I had done three runs in the past week. Hard to believe that I was capable of doing that anymore.

          Persistence, or lack thereof is probably one of the reasons people give up when they first try a new exercise program. For me, this plodding workout might as well be a new exercise program. Despite the difficulty I am having now, barring injury, I will persist until it starts becoming a habit again rather than a chore. For now, persistence is having managed to do three very slow runs last week.

          Apart from getting a runner's high and overdosing on red velvet cookies, I had a second OD last week which was caused by too much caffeine. I had such a tremendous buzz from overcaffeineation that it took more than 4 hours to come down from it. I needed some help from a little vino to come down and lots of water to decrease the caffeine concentration from the body, and so I could excrete it through urine. So how does one get overcaffeineated? The darn Gevalia coffee tasted so good, I kept sipping it without regard to the consequence. It was one of those times when I brewed it to perfect proportions as far as taste was concerned, but apparently too strong for my body to handle. If I were still able to run long distance, I might have finished a marathon on that buzz.
       
          So there it is - three high inducing runs, I mean, plods, two overdoses, and lots of persistence. You can't get any much higher than that. Anybody wanna join me start a new plodding boom? Then I can rename this blog -Thoughts About Life and Plodding.

My Continued Bumbling Attempts At Making A Proper Cup of Coffee

         This one is about caffeine content of a cup of coffee and megadosing on caffeine by mistake. One side effect that I didn’t expect from being overcaffeinated is that it seemed to hold hunger or appetite at bay for a long time. After all caffeine is a main ingredient of some if not most diet pills.

          I've always been poor at math so I'm not suprised that I have been miscalculating my caffeine intake since I bought my automatic drip coffeemaker a couple of weeks ago. When I drink instant coffee, I usually put a heaping teaspoon into a 22 oz. mug of hot water which is equivalent to 3 1/2 - 6 oz. cups. A heaping teaspoon may contain 100 mg. of caffeine at best. When I brewed my first pot of coffee, I double dosed by using 6 heaping tablespoons of coffee in about 24 oz. of water. For simplicity's sake, let's just say I correctly used 6 flat tablespoons. The normal caffeine content of a cup of coffee is about 100 mg. If I drank the whole 24 oz. pot (which I did), that would be 4 cups x 100 mg. = 400 mg of caffeine. Double dose would make it 800 mg. in one sitting. No wonder I became intoxicated on it! A week later, you'd think I learned my lesson, and in a way, I did. I only used 4 heaping tablespoons. If my calculations are correct, 24 oz. of that would contain roughly 532 mg., still a megadose of caffeine. And of course I was feeling queasy after that one too.
          Another thing I tried on that last pot was adding a pinch of salt to the coffee grounds to cut the bitterness. It didn't seem to make a heck of a lot of difference on the cheap coffee I used. This week, Ralph's grocery store has a special on a can of Don Francisco coffee at $4.00. Is that a good brand, or should I go with Dunkin Donuts coffee which I have a couple of coupons I can use to get the price to 5.99 a bag? I know for sure that Dunkin Donuts coffee is very good but the way I've been bumbling my way around the coffee pot, I don't know if that helps me make a proper cuppa joe. I may be the only person who can make a simple task such as brewing coffee be so complicated. I admit it. My coffee IQ is very poor.

Here are my other two posts about coffee:

Wired on Starbucks

and

Intoxicated on Caffeine (My First Brew)

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