I’m so under caffeinated, I can’t even come up with a title.

I’m doing the black coffee experiment. Again. Sigh.

I keep hearing the phrase, “We can do hard things.” I’m inspired by it. I quote it to my kids. I believe it.

Mostly.

After three days of straight black coffee, I think the phrase should be modified to, “We can do hard things EXCEPT BE FORCED TO DRINK BLACK POISON!” Because really that is what it tastes like.

I grew up in a home where EVERYONE drinks a lot of coffee. I mean, gallons of coffee. Coffee all morning, all afternoon, and sometimes, even before bed. And every single person in my family drinks it black. Except me.

I’m repelled by the bitterness, the thinness, the lack of substance, of black coffee. I want sweetness, fullness, something that makes me look forward to mornings. I want, plain and simple, dessert in a cup. With sugar and cream, coffee is the perfect beverage. Next to it, black coffee feels like punishment.

But I’d gotten lazy over the years. I’d starting adding seven (seven!) sugars to a grande coffee, then topped it off with four inches of half and half. Magic elixir, indeed. I did this twice a day (okay, really three), for waaaaaaay too long. None of this was added to my all-day consumption of “healthy carbs” I justified to fuel my twenty mile a day training schedule. Coffee was just coffee, right?

Let me just tell you, anyone who says that, if you run twenty miles a day you can eat whatever you want, is lying. Or stupid. I was both.

After ten years of professional running, I had gained ten pounds and carried a permanent paunch. Like a middle-aged man who spent his weeknights playing in a bowling league, drinking Miller Lite, “for exercise”.  I was definitely round around the middle.

So, I’m doing penance. Black coffee.

I think I would rather flog myself.