Don’t get me wrong, caffeine is great; just did everything wrong. I’m a minimal coffee drinker, but I decided to stop completely for a few weeks just to see if it would help to sleep more soundly. Sometimes I will drink coffee to push my triathlon workout a bit, but not often.
Suddenly, I was in the middle of setting up for Super Bowl for two weeks; so I jumped to coffee early in the morning and during the day to keep my energy/adrenals going; working longer hours, carrying a lot of heavy stuff, having a tight schedule. I was barely able to fit in my workouts somehow but I was completely worn out! ….couldn’t understand why.
As soon as THAT was over a reality show is going to be taped in our house and we had to move everything OUT within a few days! (more about that in a later post) So I continued with coffee to be able to get through the day moving stuff, sorting through everything, and keep my mojo working. I managed to squeeze my workouts in but didn’t do well.
By the time Super Bowl and Moving-Out-Of-The-House-Into-Another-House (fueled by caffeine) were finished I was pretty much a mess. All my parts were out of sorts: knees, back, neck, brain, and emotions, because the magical caffeine allowed me to push beyond my limits. I would do my best to keep my workout schedule but was exhausted from forcing my adrenaline to higher levels to ‘get things done’.
Under “normal” circumstances that amount of work would not likely have been a problem, but with that much coffee I pushed myself so that my workouts were barely functional during and after that time for another week, at least.
Lesson learned; don’t drive yourself beyond what you can normally do if you really like the pain-numbing effects of coffee. Will I do it again?….probably, at some point, when I’ve forgotten how badly I can mess myself up feeling “really wide awake”. I’m only human.