I went to Camp Gladiator at 5:45 this morning. Since I’d been out for so long, I didn’t realize that today was the last day of “peak week.” Camp Gladiator is broken out into 4 weeks. The first week is endurance. The second week is something like strength and agility. The third weeks is non-stop planks and burpees (or something like that) and the fourth week is peak week. That’s the week where you kind of tie in the previous three weeks and it’s a big kick in the ass.
When I got home from camp, it was the usual morning chaos in getting the girls ready and off to school. I wasn’t really hungry, but I could feel myself getting queasy because I’d burned a lot of calories.
Sparing the details of the day and am glad to say that I was 100% vegan today.
Breakfast: 12 oz. Vega pea protein shake
Lunch*: Trader Joe’s Super Burrito and tabbouli, tomato and mint salad
Dinner: Kung Pao cauliflower with green onion, red peppers, cashews and bok choy over brown rice
* Lunch was tough today and I experienced the difficulties of veganism to the point of frustration. I work in one of those really cool, young, technology company offices in downtown Austin where the company buys and brings in a nice catered lunch on Fridays for its ~150 employees. Today was pizza day. I surveyed the lines and saw no pizzas labeled “vegan.” I usually start thinking about lunch at 5 a.m., and today was pizza day, so I was really getting excited about having pizza of the vegan variety.
I decided to ask our office manager about options for the vegan.
“Sam, are there any vegan pizzas?”
“Ooooh, no. Sorry. They don’t make a vegan pizza.”
“Okay.”
“Oh, I forgot you were doing your vegan diet thing.”
“It’s okay. Really.”
“The salad is vegan!”
I went back to the lunch line and checked out the eight large salad bowls that were catered in. All were heavily sprinkled with cheeses of multiple varieties. So I missed out on pizza day. But I made sure to make no fuss about it. I decided that I wasn’t going to be that guy. This is, after all, to me, a challenge.
But damn could I go for some pizza.
