I haven't left my home since the NYRR 60K.  Yesterday, I managed to get dressed for the gym, walked to my front door and turned back around.  I curled up with a bowl of cereal, watched a video and felt like a failure.  After two anxiety attacks between 6PM and 6AM​, I practiced a failed attempt of corpse pose without yoga until 10AM -- thank you freelancing.  Every time I go through an episode, I remind myself to question what triggered the anxiety.  This time I allowed a bunch of insecure fuckers to make me question if I have what it takes to be an athlete.  Typically I don't dwell on those things but I do acknowledge when the noise grows.  I can usually link it to a source; this incident stemmed from my last two posts since returning back to this space.  A few minutes ago, I made myself a glass of shut the fuck up to go with my coffee and thought out loud: What exactly is an athlete.  If you can tolerate some non politically correct commentary, grab a bottle of Tequila and take a shot with me.
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Any person who reads enough ramblings from me will notice that I love running no more than 4 times a week.  On the fifth day, I want to murder everything moving.  Despite it all, I find myself signing up for races at 2AM like I'm on QVC because that's how I avoid midnight snacks these days.  I'm almost certain this is how I signed up for the New York Road Runners' Knickerbocker 60K.  Somehow I managed to develop amnesia for the third time and thought running 37.2 miles two weeks after the New York City Marathon was a GREAT idea.  If I could complete my first 100K last year six days before the NYC Marathon and do this race two weeks after, what could possibly go wrong this year?  Every. Single. Thing.  
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If it feels like it's been a long time since I've wrote anything consistent here, that would be painfully accurate.  There's not one particular reason that I can give you but I can throw out a few:
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1. My 2019 schedule was built for an endurance nutter like me;
2. I underestimated how busy I'd be as a full time sponsored athlete;
3. Shitty comments from random fuckers I don't know on the internet made me reevaluate posting regular updates on here -- or anywhere.

Through one on one interactions with people in the running community and with loved ones reminded me about the reasons why I constructed this crazy website Running Fat Chef and it damn sure wasn't for internet fame.  I truly love blurbing about the highs, lows, unstable moments and adventure that comes with fitness, particularly running.  By having a honest heart to heart with myself, I buried myself under a blanket, wrote down a list with my insecurities, rolled it into a shape of a blunt and decided to say "fuck all of that shit-- I'm writing again."  

With that said, let's talk about my 2019 highs and lows before the year is out -- and let's start with my DNFs.
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In many ways, I think the universe likes to piss on my imaginary cornflakes with some form of mishap to my body.  This time it came in the form of a respiratory infection.  Ah, nothing like the good luck charm masquerading in the form of a dry cough with an annoying wheeze from your chest.  If this wasn't my first duathlon, perhaps I would've considered staying home -- but race costs make my lint wear sponge rollers like a black eighties mom gripping a belt because you didn't come home by curfew.  I suppressed my bitching and toed the start line glancing at my Garmin app and hoping that all of my hardware wouldn't fail me for the fiftieth time this year.  Most first time experiences are special and despite the circumstances, I longed for this feeling for a few years.

Tomorrow morning, I will be in Central Park like most of my races but this one will be different.  I'm doing my first duathlon.  Maybe you think that I said TRIATHLON; nope -- duathlon.  For anyone who isn't familiar with the term, a duathlon is a multi sport event that's typically comprised of running and cycling.  Despite my loving pseudonym Running Fat Chef, I am a neurotic little adventurer who enjoys a good athletic challenge that makes my uncoordinated rhythmless nation body twinkle. And if I didn't give myself enough pressure, I quite literally woke up one morning and expressed interest in power lifting "one day" to a power lifting bad ass by the name of Morit Summers.  Within a few days, I woke up freshly signed up for the Iron Maiden's Raw Open with only seven weeks to train versus most people's ten to fourteen weeks.  Maybe I forgot to mention that these events are literally six days apart AND I have about 10 - 20 road and trail running events left on my calendar.  I think it's safe to say that I'm a bit impulsive and extreme.  This admirable quality has me shitting bricks as I nurse myself in Vicks Vapor Rub and a bunch of CBD based products from iKOR Labs because I'm sick.  It's only been a week since I finished the Hood to Coast Relay.  No pressure -- no pressure at all kids.  Since I'll be limited in my fitness after Sunday, I'll blurb about my ridiculous anxieties about power lifting on another day.

For the record, I hate the word motivation 5 out of the 7 days of the week.  

"What keeps you motivated?"
"I'm inspired to be an athlete but I don't have motivation like you do."

Fuck motivation; be consistent.  And when you cannot be consistent, reflect.  In the running community and beyond, people toss around motivation like its something you can buy at the corner store from Papi.  Go ahead-- pick up that can of fleeting motivation next to the Skittles and Starbursts but tell me how that scam works.  If I could buy it on the shelf tomorrow, I'd return that can of shit back and ask for a refund.  Just like anything you want in life, you have to earn it and the road to success is not a straight line.
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As a plus size athlete, fatphobic comments run steadily like water.  And being a black woman, I have enough traumatic stories to keep you drunk for an entire month.  Bring the Johnny Walker and we could have a marvelous party in self pity -- but I prefer to not indulge.  Instead, I love running or doing gym bro shit.  Scaring the shit out of my 62 year old mom as I tell her about traveling to another trail in an affluent community that will try to search my locs as if I'm holding onto a special strain of marijuana is more of my thing.  I know how harshly the world views me and others who share some sort of attribute that comes with living in this body -- and the media knows it too.  Since they're so knowledgeable about it, these so called 'professional' publications and corporate companies found gimmicky ways of generating buzz.  This weeks' anal chafing came from an opinion piece written by Tanya Gold posted in The Telegraph -- and I'd be dipped in hushpuppy battered shit if I'm posting a link on here.  

How many of you found yourself sucked into the world of marathon training because someone said something like "if you can do XX, you can be a marathoner?"  Yep -- that's definitely how I got sucked into this vortex called marathon training.  I have to admit that I cannot blame anyone for engulfing into ultra marathons.  While training for my first NYC Marathon in 2015 - second marathon to the Rock n Roll DC - I started going taper crazy and signed up for the New York Road Runners' 60K that took place two weeks later.  In hindsight, I realized I must've lost my fucking mind and purged all of my happy pill after mile 29 inside of a port-a-potty somewhere around loop 6.  You have no idea how much you hate life, happy spectators enabling your neurotic addiction to medals and how broth tastes like unicorn tears after experiencing sodium deficiency until you do one of these things.  Long story short, I made it across that finish line that day.  I came in at 9 hours, 47 minutes and 22 seconds and vowed to never touch one of these things again in life.  Like all endurance runners, we're full of shit when we're not letting it off into the wilderness or some random café.  Most people know about marathons but what the hell is an ultra marathon -- and why would I even want to do it?

My mind and body has kept me captive for the last week.  Every time I try to escape this sedentary state, I'm back on my sofa or working on my computer for hours for assignments.  For the last week, I gave myself a full blown pep talk of what I'm going to do and how I'm going to do it.  One morning I forgot to set my alarm and it was already 9AM - which is ridiculously late for me - and another day, I woke up at 5AM with clothes laid out but greeted to brutal temperatures and an aching body.  It feels as if the world is giving me an assortment of excuses to not leave my house.  I have the Humana Rock n Roll New Orleans in a few weeks, just purchased my tickets and I don't feel prepared at all.  

I've done my share of relatively dumb shit -- I'm not sure if I'd count my race calendar as one.  To people who aren't ultra runners or enjoy the stark feeling of dancing with death by blisters may look at me rather strange.  After fixing up this website to make it look like an adult who cares about their life actually blurbs here, I realized that I signed up for a shit load of races this year -- some that's not even on the website calendar as of yet.  I'm looking at a minimum of ten marathons, a 50 miler, one TransRockies Run that total 120 miles with a 20K climb over the course of six days and yeah, I'm massaging the thought of signing up for a 100 miler.  Perhaps I did fall short on a special sort of stupid but I love it.  It doesn't stop me from asking myself what the fuck did I just sign up for each and every time.

The internet is a gift and curse to many.  Through social media, I literally went from being a novice athlete who worked out for fun to being sponsored and partnered up with some dynamic companies.  And while I don't regret posting up my regimen, sharing highlights of my day through ASMR style cooking videos and occasional rants here and there, know that it's not as glamorous as it appears.  In fact, I recently jumped up close to a thousand followers in the last 36 hours at the expense of being a target of heckling on social media.  Oftentimes I am conflicted on calling people out, turning the other cheek or being vulnerable about the degrees of hurtful exchanges produced by strangers who hate me for breathing.  

When I officially started training for my first race, the Michelob 13.1 series in Queens, I remember not knowing what the hell I was doing.  My chest burned after three minutes of running and the only thing that kept me going was the idea of losing out on the race entry fee.  Feel free to judge my cheap ways because I know that I'm not alone in this sentiment.  One unusually warm winter morning, I went to Boys and Girls track feeling defeated and reducing my run down to a speed walk.  This long limbed, Shaun T looking extra galloped in front of me.  Her skin looked like rich dark chocolate and in my mind, her sweat probably tasted like a box of Girl Scout Cookies --and no I wasn't checking her out (that much).  I remember her because she did two and a half loops to my one loop.  She smiled at me on her fourth time around and even said good morning as I walked off the track pissed. 

'Fuck her for being able to sing while running that quickly.'  I actually said this out loud when I stopped the timer on my Runkeeper app.  I didn't hate her but she represented what I didn't have at the time:  Endurance, speed and a personal peace with running.  I was the Salt Bae of hater's anonymous.  In hindsight, I know that she wasn't my real problem.

Unlike most of my friend list on Instagram, my husband had to wake me up two minutes before the start of the New Year.  It's my lovely 30s kicking my ass and reminding me that I could give two bits of a damn about staying awake long enough to watch the ball drop.  Our family friend Joanna, my son EJ, husband and I had a celebratory drink - and the kid had sparkling cider - before I was ready to call it a night.  An exhausted Eric grew irritated about my line of questioning about what time we would go for our training run; he finally agreed that he'd wake up at whatever ungodly hour I was ready to go.  Whenever a spouse says something like this to you, it's a polite way of them telling you to please shut the hell up and leave them alone.  In my heart, I wanted to be a jerk and wake him for o'dark thirty; instead my body knew better and waited until after 8AM.

Fortunately for all of Brooklyn, I found my way to the gym and after I type this post, I'll be running through some rain for a few miles because it's another day of the week --not because it's fucking Monday.  If I allowed the fitness gods to peek into my already over-sharable life beyond what I show on social media, I might be offered as some cult sacrifice to the Reading Rainbow coalition.  I've heard everything from not allowing your knees to cross your toes - yep, that's officially bullshit and you can Google check that - to not being considered a runner if you fall under a certain pace.  Frankly, all of these rules can sit and rotate.  This never missing a Monday logic makes me want to drink a Shake it Baby tea because of course, we know how well senna and laxatives work on the body.
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