I love chocolate. Chocolate I love. Dark chocolate mostly. 50%. 70%. Any more cacao extracts than that, and chocolate becomes coffee. I does not love coffee. Me loves chocolate.
Here, are 10 excuses for eating chocolate. CHOCOLATE!!!!
- Chocolate may help you think better. It’s true. Or so says the Internets. In any case, eating chocolate makes a happy tongue, and tummy. And we all know the brain and tongue and tummy all have frequent conversations.
- Chocolate may make you happiers. It’s also true. There are chemicals in chocolate (the dark kind mostly) that release little happy creatures in your brain and your body. This is a good thing. Eat chocolate. Be happy.
- Chocolate can help your heart. So says the Cleveland Clinic. All because of fun food words like flavonoids. “Flavonoids help protect plants from environmental toxins and help repair damage. They can be found in a variety of foods, such as fruits and vegetables. When we eat foods rich in flavonoids, it appears that we also benefit from this “antioxidant” power.” Chocolate is rich in flavonoids. Eat chocolate=Happy heart.
- Chocolate can indicate whether you are really depressed or not. That’s a deduction made from reading this article, and not a prescription.”First, depression could stimulate chocolate cravings as ‘self-treatment,’” the article says, “if chocolate confers mood benefits, as has been suggested in recent studies of rats…” Which means the right thing to do is say “Well rats, I’m depressed. Guess I better get me some chocolate.”
- Chocolate in milk can genuinely be “Your After.” As legend goes, a few years back a bunch of kid athletes involved in a performance experiment were sneaking chocolate milk on the side. This anomaly surprised physiologists who studied the beneficial effects of chocolate milk and a giant chocolatey advertising campaign was born. However washing real chocolate down with actual milk may suppress antioxidants (see next good reason…) and thus the contradictions in dietary advice always ruin things. That is better known as the Chocolate “Before and After.”
- Chocolate is an anti-aging drug. There are antioxidants in dark chocolate along with flavonoids. While not the fountain of youth we’ve all been seeking (it won’t stop age spots or wrinkles) it helps your body to have antioxidants because they fight a nasty little effect call free radicals. Which is not a political statement of any kind.
- Dark chocolate can lower your blood pressure. That’s because the right kind of chocolate is simply bad ass. Don’t ask questions. It works.
- Dark chocolate can lower your cholesterol. It also eats up that sticky crap called LDL, the bad cholesterol in your circulatory system. Yay chocolate!
- Oh My God! We almost forgot endorphins! Chocolate releases into your brain and body a wealth of happy hormoney things called endorphins that give you an elevated mood.
- Chocolate comes in many forms, generally good. It is almost never boring, will not steal your place in line at the pharmacy and will not vote for Donald Trump. That makes it a better person than about 50% of the population in this world. Eat chocolate. Make peace. And run, ride and swim to your heart’s content. Chocolate will go along for the ride quite easily.
LOVE LIFE.
I’ve noticed there are plenty of organizations that put 
One truly wonders what God, if asked, would say about all this? Well, truth be told, there does seem to be considerable support in early scripture for violence and acts of genocide. These were ostensibly conducted with God’s full direction and approval.
Such is the case with all conflicts. They are always contextual, yet never eternal. The so-called Cold War was a collision of concealed intentions between the former Soviet Union the United States. Yet along came the call for an open society in the former Soviet Union and the communist threat dissipated. So will the conflicts over religion if the human race just slows down and takes stock of what’s really going on.
It really is that basic. The idea that it should be a problem to approach a mosque or a synagogue and ask to use the bathroom is the problem. We’re all guilty of that in our respective fears of other humanity. Fear and ignorance is the problem. Would you ask to enter a black church to use the bathroom? Why in fact are there black or Mexican or Korean or Greek Orthodox churches at all?
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Mountain biking is a wonderful thing to do on a late Sunday afternoon in February when the skies are gray and the temperatures nuzzle into the 40s. That’s what found me pedaling north through the tri-cities of Batavia, Geneva and St. Charles.
I also pedaled past the old high school in St. Charles where our family moved in 1973 from a town 15 miles to the west. The adjustment to a new school was both fun and strange. And that fall in cross country I ran against my old teammates.
Then I went swimming with friends in the black water quarry below her house and realized with a shock that the world did not care if I lived or died. I could sink into the water and be lost to eternity. The newspapers would mark the death as the stupid antics of a drunk teenager. So I swam to shore and climbed out like a pale white crab on a rocky beach. Alive, at least.
Pedaling along the Fox River, I noticed a string of cars parked near a river island. In the trees were groups of Bald eagles. These were once extinct in the Fox Valley. Only through the banning of DDT and water quality laws has it been possible for these birds to make a comeback in our river valley.That gave me the feeling that the many years of writing about the environment have not been wasted.
I’ve always thought it something of a blessing to be moody. One spring day in the mid- 80s, as I headed out for a long run, I found myself quietly singing the words to The Pretender by Jackson Browne. I know them by heart, and their passionate call to consider the meaning of life, and work, and love.
But it’s often too late to apologize if you cut across the grain the wrong way. Which sucks because the whole reason we’re doing all this endurance stuff in the first place, if truth be told, is to work off the absurdities of life. Hours behind a desk. Cramped behind a steering wheel. Stuck in a work situation. A marriage. Whatever. Problems like these when seen from 30,000 feet never amount to much. But up close, these situations? They make us sad, or angry, or afraid. It’s absurd, isn’t it? We should all have to take a jet to work, I guess. So that we can see all the ants driving around in their little ant cars.
The singer is known to be a bit prickly at times. Perhaps it’s the inevitable product of creative forces within his head. Creative people see both the absurdities and realities in life. This dichotomy throws you right back in the center, where justice of one kind or another resides. Sometimes you can be totally right about a situation, and be deemed wrong because it does not fit the social situation at a moment. You are judged by that nonetheless.
It’s no different out there on the road, or sharing a lane in a pool. There is etiquette to follow. When roadies ride with triathletes, they cannot stand the manner in which the multisport people ride. It feels like chaos, all twitchy and self-absorbed. Their tri-bikes are low slung and designed for one thing, hunching down and riding along, alone.
We’re all susceptible to these seemingly passive perceptions that have some basis in reality. When another person doesn’t get what’s bugging us, it can be hard to describe what the problem really is.
Walking into the indoor track this morning, I witnessed one of the gals being trained for running form pull over in a series of halting steps and lean down either to catch her breath or deal with whatever pain was vexing her. But it wasn’t clear whether that pain was physical or emotional.
It’s all so easy to get carried away. Yet to “get crazy” is often perceived as a good thing. The craziness of doing event like a 100 mile run or an Ironman consumes us wholly. Yet we do it and share these experiences because it’s a way to react to life. The fight against the mundane is perpetual. We dive in and we back off. We engulf ourselves in the miracle and hope of craziness. We learn things about ourselves. Some of that is good. Some not so much.
We now know that endurance sports contribute important chemical support from within the body to combat depression. There are cognitive benefits as well. Combined, and with common sense, these benefits are healthy indeed.
All this craziness is like a three-way mirror, or more. People aren’t so much crazy as they are trying to look at themselves from several angles at the same time. When someone catches you doing it, the situation can be a little embarrassing. But why else do so many millions of people shoot selfies? And why do they so often choose to use mirrors to do so, rather than the self timer?
The idea that “all things are possible through God” is inviting, however. Yet it has been my experience that the things possible through God often have nothing to do with our own expectations or desires. They have everything to do with comprehending our ultimate place in the universe. I’ve seen people close to me die. Parents and a spouse. I know what it means for life to come to an end. I know what it means to have mercy extended before that happens, and why it is so important to show mercy however you can to others. It is our true role as human beings to do so.
That’s what I take to the starting line, and everything I do these days. The will to try is balanced by the acceptance of forgiveness. Many times in my career I’ve been fortunate to find that sweet spot in time, the place where the joy of competing is rewarded with the relaxation of knowing I’m doing my best. But not always.
On every team, there is always one or two people who love the dynamic but actually seem bent on messing it up. They might be noisy or obnoxious. They lead intervals too hard or too often, but can’t actually race. Or they might lack social awareness in some strange way.
I watched the Olympic Trials marathon on DVR, so I already knew who would win. And I fell asleep watching it. And so missed the 
As a kid, I could not swallow pills. My mother had to pack them into food to get them down. I distinctly remember the acid taste of aspirin exploding on my tongue. And crying.
I also graduated to Ibuprofen as my pain reliever of choice. When headaches came on and I took Tylenol, literally nothing happened. Decades later I had this conversation with a nurse at a hospital:
With all the debate over government spending and what constitutes socialism raging across the land, perhaps it’s a good time to shed some perspective on how government really works. And it all centers around running.
children. Some do a great job. More often they’re frustrated or disappointed with what public schools (and even private) have to offer. All it takes is one bad teacher and some folks want to toss the whole system down the drain.
Well, all of them went to public schools. And many went to public universities. Even private colleges depend on national infrastructure, government loan programs and other methods of sustenance to run their operations. No organization exists in a void.
And it was even discussed working collaborative with the park district. But that might have bloated the referendum and caused some genuine needs to blacked out. That’s both the problem and power of compromise, a principled manner of discourse that is sorely lacking in America.
Yet we’ve allowed the nation’s infrastructure like roads and bridges fall into disrepair because a collection of strident assholes in Congress don’t want to fund bills to pay for basics like that. They took a pledge to some nutjob to never raise taxes, and that’s how they run our government. And our nation is getting run down as a result. It’s becoming one giant tarsnake.
