Followup

Some of you may remember my post from last week about The Sprinkler, who was leaving messes on the toilet seat. After a particularly messy bathroom afternoon, my co-conspirators and I had had enough. I wrote to the office manager (a man) again and begged him to put up a note addressing our specific problem. I even included a sarcastic suggestion of what I thought the note should say, including terms like "for the love of God" and "you throw like a girl." Much to my surprise, the office manager came over and said that the note was fine how it was. It conveyed anger and humor at the same time, and showed that this behavior was unacceptable. "I can't go in there, though," he said. "You hang it up."

Me?! Accept responsibility for this?! Nuh uh! If any of this blew up in our faces, I wanted to make sure that I wasn't the only vigilante taking matters into her own hands. So I recruited my co-conspirators. Fellow runner, and member of the hardest working production team in the publishing world, Liz aka Za-beth took my words and brought them to life with her design and production knowledge. She took out some of the more offensive wording, and designed the sign to maintain but soften the sarcastic tone. Within 24 hours, the following sign was posted in both bathrooms:

Please excuse the comment sticker. The image was made from a PDF at the final stage of editing. Yes, when you work in publishing, even the signs for the bathroom go through a couple of editing passes.

For obvious reasons, we have to be clandestine about it. But at least one sweet, soft-spoken long-time employee has given positive feedback. We win!

Another thing I have to follow up on is the detox. We're going on 11 days now, and dare I say that I'm adapting? I mentioned the trouble giving up caffeine, that has now passed. I'm still dependent on sleep aids (I'm beginning to think that nothing natural will cure my insomnia), but I've been able to sleep every night that I've taken something (which doesn't always happen, even when I do overdose on nighttime over-the-counter stuff).

For the first week I was absolutely wiped physically. I'd dug deeper than I thought in the Hyannis not-even-close Marathon, and my body just felt so crappy that I was convinced that I was going to have to take a week off of training altogether to feel human again. And then, on the seventh day, after only 2 hours' sleep (that was the night I tried going without the Advil PM), I got up to go for a long swim... and I felt awesome! Without putting in any special effort, I took about 8-10 seconds off my usual 300 time, and after swimming 4,000 hard yards, I still felt like I could have kept swimming all morning. I stayed home from work that day to take a nap (I still had a sick day coming to me, and I'm useless when I'm tired anyway), and around lunchtime I got on my trainer. I ground out a hard 2 hours with 5-minute stints as hard as I could go every 15 minutes. The sluggishness in my legs from earlier in the week was suddenly gone, and I was averaging roughly 2 mph faster that I usually would on a similar workout. Even my runs have been fantastic. That night I ran a short interval workout, and despite being dehydrated and depleted from my ride, the run went great, as did the tempo run with hills that I did on Thursday. Where I thought I was going to have to take a week of bedrest next week, now I feel like I'm already coming off a rest week. I feel like Artie: The Strongest Man... in the World!

And the willpower thing hasn't been as difficult as I thought. In the first week I thought I'd kill for some yogurt covered raisins. I couldn't imagine how I was going to get through 40-some days without sugar. I still crave sugar when I'm hungry, and that's been the hardest, but I'm not about to start murdering babies and selling my soul to get it. I found myself standing in the aisle of Whole Foods for 10 minutes last night, debating the identity of raw sugar, evaporated cane juice, and other "natural" sweeteners like "raisin juice concentrate" and "fruit sweetener." In the end I decided that in the body, sugar is sugar no matter where it comes from. In a huge feat of willpower I put the hippie cereal back on the shelf. (I have had to put some maple syrup in my iced tea for hard runs, but got through an 80-mile trainer ride on fruit alone.)

I miss the comfort of decaf coffee once or twice a week, but I'm trying all kinds of different herbal teas, and it's almost as comforting. Almost. I don't miss cheese nearly as much as I thought I would and I'm drinking soy milk for the first time in years. And giving up the processed grains has been more of a challenge to my social life than my appetite. No changes in body composition, except maybe tipping the scales about 1% heavier (.1% more body fat), but I'm not too worried about it. My weight has fluctuated within 3 lb in either direction for over a year, but it's not long before it comes back home.

So for those of you who are wondering how I'm doing living off tree bark, nuts, rocks, and berries, I'm doing just fine, thank you very much. And it's WAY easier than I thought it would be.