Admittedly, I have trust issues with my entire calendar at this moment.  Several races were cancelled and I've been playing it by ear with the swimming facility that I use.  As of this morning, I lost 4 paid gigs and nervous about booking any flights until the dates are closer -- and who knows if I'll have the money to finance it by these dates.  At the moment, COVID-19 is wreaking havoc on the entire world and people have justified reasons to be nervous.  Watching how organized events start to unravel over the course of a few weeks, my feelings shifted from disappointed to numbness.  Within a month, a great chunk of my scheduled races are gone:  Tokyo Marathon, New York City Half Marathon, a change of date for The Love Run and my Hot Chocolate 15K in Philadelphia is officially a virtual run.  With the exception of the Tokyo Marathon, I feel like all of these places handled it the best way that they possibly could -- I'll be kind and reserve my feelings since we're kinda going through a pandemic.

Surely people are hurt from the change in events and this goes well beyond running.  New York City feels eerie from the lack of people populating the gym or local pool.  Restaurants are thinning particularly Asian establishments -- thanks xenophobia.  Pictures of Times Square surfacing the internet are being compared to every horror movie or crazy book known to man.  And because I'm a fitness aficionado, I am loaded with questions about what I will do to press forward.  After all, fitness is not just something that I do for fun. I am a freelancer who uses her platform to speak about these adventures -- which requires for you to be around people.  At this moment, my social media accounts are bogged down with concerns about their training going to the wayside to questioning how will people maintain their marbles as the world goes COVID-19 crazy.  

Public speaking jades you a bit.  It makes you feel like you've told the same story thousands of times and for me, I worry if I sound rehearsed or if I am fit to tell my story -- what's poppin' imposter syndrome.  But when those thoughts creep into my head, I remind myself that there is someone who doesn't know my story and it may help another.  It's easy to get wrapped up in this idea that we need to possess a certain look or feel to be qualified to talk to others; I am reminded daily that most of us are struggling together and through open communication comes healing.

Last Sunday, I traveled to the University of Alaska Fairbanks to speak about one of those painful topics that I don't think I will ever be fully comfortable discussing:  My battle with an eating disorder.  Contrary to the nonsensical commentary that's thrown my way, I do not have a problem with overeating; i am a work in progress from an anorexia nervosa diagnosis in 2015.  When I think about the discussions held from Monday to Wednesday, I realize how many people walk around with this perception that eating disorders have a stereotypical look and only stemmed from this desire to look pretty.  I can attest this was not my case.  And the way that most public service announcements post up advertisements about the uncomfortable topic, I don't see a version of me in most places.  It is not typical to see a black, plus size woman in athletic clothing as one of these people who might be afflicted by an eating disorder.

To close out National Eating Disorder Association week - or otherwise hashtagged #NEDAweek - I'll dissect my bullshit relationship with anorexia and how the fitness industry helped and hindered me.

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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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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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.  

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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