The lean years

I spent most of this week on my knees - not in training exhaustion, but for my first time - in the garden. Laying grass may just be the most ‘retirement thing’ I’ve done yet, but as to be somewhat expected, spending time in nature without a smartphone actually feels kinda good. Admittedly I’ve spent quite a lot of time staring at soil and wondering if I’ve watered something too much or not enough - no plant in my care has unfortunately ever had a prosperous life.

Last week the family & I escaped the rain & ensuing mud pit for the weekend at our usual spot by the beach. For dinner at the local, we ordered fish (whole), lamb, pasta, and two side dishes. The waiter looked at us. We looked at each other. There was a pause that contained, I think, about three years of dietary recalibration neither of us had quite completed. And it got us wondering how different life would have been without continuously living in an energy deficit.

The sports nutrition world has decided, collectively, that lots helps lots and more helps more as far as carbs are concerned. We’ve gone from the EnergyBar plus hope era, saving a flat Coke for the final 30 minutes so you don’t come crashing off the sugar high before the finish line, to athletes taking about new “insert personal best” grams per hour.

Oscar Wilde said the first thing you lose on a diet is your good mood.

He was being generous. What you actually lose is the buffer between a thought and a reaction. That half-second where a reasonable person considers whether something is worth the energy. I didn’t have that. What I had was a blood glucose level somewhere south of functional and very firm opinions about other people’s driving.

Emma and I used to joke about it even then, which was either emotionally intelligent or a survival strategy. Probably the latter. The beach dinner brought it all back - not heavily, more like watching old footage of yourself and shaking your head in disbelief. We sat there laughing. The reactions. The certainty. The absolute conviction that every minor inconvenience was genuinely, objectively wrong and required immediate comment.

It turns out a significant portion of my personality was just hunger with a strong sense of justice.

So while the sports world has moved to treating aid stations like an all-you-can-eat buffet, I’ll admit I watch the whole thing with a degree of wistfulness. Not because I miss the racing. More because I still can’t quite talk myself into eating like the current trends are suggesting gets the best performance. The deficit remained a habit long after the sport stopped requiring it, which is either discipline or a very specific kind of vanity. I lean toward the latter.

But if the current generation is going through a week’s worth of gels before lunch, I hope at least that they are slightly more pleasant to be around. Better for their relationships. More tolerant of strangers coming to sit on their wheel during an easy ride. The diabetes risk might be worth it.

Jan.