19ish and I may finally have had a big breakthrough

After 33 days, I took the weekend "off" from W30. That means that I played "is it worth it" and ate what I really wanted. I did not go nuts. I did not try to cram in all my old favorites before going back on the wagon. I did not eat bread just because it was in front of me. Mostly I drank. I went to a beer festival, but abandoned more than half of my giant Oktoberfest stein. I went to a wedding and had wine, from a glass which kept magically getting refilled. I ate ONE BITE of cheesecake wedding cake. WITH CARAMEL SAUCE (I looooooove caramel sauce).  I had brunch at my favorite brunch place and tasted the biscuit (another favorite), ate some roasted potatoes, and left both unfinished on my plate (again, previously unheard of). I did not feel great after eating a fraction of a buttery biscuit. I was on my own Saturday and thought about going out for lunch and eating a sandwich or something I once loved, but nothing seemed worth it, so I went home and defrosted some spicy Vietnamese beef stew and enjoyed it. And I happily got back on the W30 train after brunch for another 34 days. Which will get me to my marathon. I will potentially have something non-W30 after the race. If I really want it.

I feel good. I feel in control. I feel like I've turned a corner.

But... I am so slow!!!! I did last week's long run this morning and damn, I'm slow. I'm looking at a 5 hour marathon. I felt fine, nothing hurt, and I felt like I was going at a decent pace, but the app said otherwise. I was running in the city and had to stop at traffic lights, but still! I'm excited to be running. I'm enjoying being out there for hours (and hours). But I'm frustrated by how slow I am. True I haven't run this much in 5 years, and I'm 5 years older (crossing that critical 40 milestone in those 5 years), and a bit heavier (working on that), and I have a frankensteined foot (surgery fusing together two bones four years ago) which required a very long recovery. But I'm SLOW. Better slow and moving than couchbound I suppose. I did somewhere between 18 and 19 miles. I was having some trouble with my tracking apps, and just ran around my neighborhood in a bunch of loops since I was worried that last week's hip and foot pain might cut my run short, so I'm not really sure how much I did. I was out around 4 hours. So a lot.

I ate Trader Joe's fruit leather while I was out. It seemed to do the trick. It's fruit juice concentrate, no additional sugars. 50 calories per package and very portable and not nearly as gross as pureed sweet potato.