Trying Something New. Or Am I?

So, I'm trying something new--unless it's just the same ol' same ol'.

The New York Times is all about it.

The "it" in question is high intensity interval training. All very well and good. Basically, it means you run like hell now and then.

So I gave it a shot tonight.

Felt okay--a bit exhausting.

10-minute warm-up run, 20 minutes alternating 1 minute of sprinting with two minutes of walking--not too daunting, this--then ten minutes of walking, a little jogging.

I figure the more I bring my heart rate down in the 'recovery' periods, the better.

But all the while, part of me was thinking: Now, God, now can I eat whatever I frigging want?

Can I go home and eat leftover Easter marshmallow chicks and some pastries from La Victoria bakery?

Can I eat the last few mint-flavored chocolate-covered graham crackers that Keebler makes to steal the thunder from those sweet little Girl Scouts. (They should beat the crap out of that flippin' elf. That is a smackdown I would love to see. God I'm high from the exercise! Listen to me! I'm fantasizing over girl-on-elf action.)

No, of course, I can't eat all that.

I'll have some pasta, though I usually try to avoid carbs at night (interferes with sleep, something about the blood sugar).

But this really brings it all home.

Is there, somewhere, a non-neurotic attitude towards food? Not in me there ain't.

Thinking of a friend's blog, it's like looking at a life from the wrong end of a telescope. She basically writes: this made me stressed, so I bought something to comfort myself or ate something to comfort myself.

And I'm just the same.

Funny how we all buy things, leisure products, that take time to consume, that are time--music, movies. Yet we don't have time to enjoy them. How many CD's do you have? Illegal mp3 or DVD downloads? Forget about gigabytes: what does iTunes give you as a total number of listening/watching hours. It's like we're all hoarding

And maybe the same thing goes for calories. I want to hoard more than I burn. (Big Idea: time is to the 21st century what calories and the vocabulary of energy were to the 19th century.)

It's like we're all asking all the time: "Just once, just once, for God's sake, can the laws of physics not apply to me? Might I not be the only one, nearly the only one, in the history of the planet, who was not constrained by so-called reality?"

And of course the answer is always 'No,' but that doesn't stop our almost-species-defining wishful thinking.

Indeed, the history of civilization might well be the history of a series of concepts invented by humans to try to think of ourselves as separate from nature.

There was "God." And "humanity." And "consciousness"--that was big in the 19th century.

All concepts meant to say: I am in this special domain where what I say goes. It's all about sovereignty. But we ain't got it.

The laws of physics have dominion over us. We're part of nature, and it just bugs the crap out of us.

(My dad used to have a cartoon: God and an angel, and God's saying, "So here's what we'll do. Let's take some of the smarter apes and give them a little more memory." And that's us.)

Burn all the calories you like. If you eat more, you'll still have a spare friggin' tire around your middle.

Unless you're that ultramarathon guy who runs like 100 miles. You hearda him?

He runs a marathon to warm-up, runs a competitive marathon, then runs another marathon or two--kinda like desert.

He can sleep while running.

In the middle of a run, he'll call ahead and order a pizza and a cheesecake. He eats it--and keeps on running. Doesn't throw up or shit. Just runs.

I hate him.

But if I were him, one pizza and one cheesecake would not be enough.

--E. R. O'Neill