Welcome home wayward son

Well, eventful past few days. I finally feel like a runner again. Sunday, I ran 10 miles with some people from the triathlon team it reminded me of when I ran and why I love it. Saturday, I watched my girl run a marathon. It was really fun to see all the runners energy and all of the different emotions in everyone's faces. Friday, I swam 800 yrds ran 5 miles and swam 400 yrds. I really do miss running, the wind, the breathing, the sound of my feet on the ground, so many emotions and miles passing. I hope I can do it for years to come.


How did I end up with a vegetarian girlfriend? First off you have to understand the background that I was hurled into as a Sanderson, whose family crest is “plenty of food and plenty of people to eat it.” All family functions involved the women and select male cooks of the families to bring their best dishes mainly chocked full of meat. Eating meat was a serious deal, and how to cook it was a family conversation. I was raised in the South around southern people in country backwoods places. I know how to skin animals I know what I have to do to catch crawfish. It is not uncommon to see a dead deer tied to someone’s four-wheeler which is sitting high in the bed of their truck while they drive through town as if to show off their kill. Most all of my family hunts or owns firearms with intentions to harvest an animal from the woods with intentions of eating the meat and developing stories of how big the said animal was. On Christmas, camouflage gear WILL be a present to someone. We’ve raised all sorts of animals to eat later on geese, chickens, pig…. I guess you could call it free grazing. So that is my background, in a meat flavored nutshell. I recently started seeing and dating a vegetarian (on her way to becoming vegan). How does this work? I ask myself all the time. 99.975% of the time it is compromise on my part. Is it difficult? Not really. Does it take understanding? Yes. It is not even blending two lifestyles together because that would compromise her vegetarian lifestyle. Is it a novelty? I don’t know yet. Right now I’m educating and learning. It’s something new and fun. People come together in my family at the dinner table. It is where we find out commons and differences about one another. Now on my dinner table I have a vegetarian sitting across from me. Does she look down on me because I’m eating this meat in front of her? I like passionate and driven people and the things that interested her about going to a vegetarian lifestyle must have been a very passionate feeling. In turn I like that she is what she is as different as it is from me. Does she try to turn me to the green side? I’ve sensed little passes of trying to get me in the mindset that’s for sure. Will it always be a topic for discussion every time I see her? I think it is like dating someone from a different race or culture I will never know what it’s like because I’m not vegetarian but I can sympathize. I hope I can get to know her enough to where it is just a smooth seam in our little dating journey. Though it does conflict with my upbringing tremendously I do not find it troubling. She does seem interested in how I tend to find other foods worth experimenting with and how open I am to things that she considers everyday. As a matter of fact she made me some vegetarian dish and that is what I ate for lunch today. So maybe I am turning! Haha!

Mileage:
swim 1200 yrds
run 15 miles