It occurred to me last night, during a 3.67 mile walk to deliver our monthly rent check, that there is an internal conflict raging in my head. The fight is between my two alter egos, the Lazy-Ass Gamer and the Fitness Blogger/Runner. The battle for control of my body and my evening actions was previously (for the past year and a couple of months) dominated by the runner, but since the half marathon a few weeks ago, the battle has swung back in the other direction.

After training toward one set goal for over twenty weeks, wrapped up in the success of finishing the race, I think my Runner half decided it was halftime and headed to the locker room. The several weeks of feeling pretty broken and sore gave my Lazy-Ass Gamer personality the opportunity it needed to blast through the gaps and dominate my evenings. I've been playing many hours of games most nights a week, which in all honesty is a lot of fun, because I play with many good friends of mine. The problem though is that I feel absolutely horrific. The added hours on a computer each day have resulted in significantly more headaches, less sleep, less exercise, and more mindless eating. You would think it would be easy to get back to my healthy lifestyle again.

Most addicting game ever.

The problem that Ellie and I identified last night is that my personality is, in a way, obsessive.  I like to focus all my effort on one thing, and it typically leads to ignoring everything else. The past year was almost entirely about training, blogging, running . . . just being healthy. When I wasn't doing that, I was reading about it, talking about it, and programming websites for it. The past few weeks have been the opposite. I have been 100 percent fixated on playing games with my friends. We have been playing League of Legends, which is a real-time session-based battle-arena game in which the objective is to train up your character to directly battle with your team of five players against another team of five players. It is a ton of fun, especially when you have a group of good friends all playing. It is an extremely knowledge-based game, which means that understanding things like positioning, itemization, character abilities and counters, not to mention developing our team synergy (which takes years), is incredibly complex and takes a lot of time. The problem is I don't like being average in the game. If I play, I want to be the best, and with LoL that is a pretty difficult thing to do without hours invested.

Left: Maxivik (My Lazy-Ass Gaming Alter Ego); Right: Jono and Ellie running the half marathon

Finding a balance in life is obviously essential. I need to let my inner gamer out to play, but at the same time he needs to be in check and in control. Running and writing this blog has been immensely rewarding, and at the end of the day that is what is most important to me. But to avoid burning out (or worse, gaining back the weight I've lost), I think it is important to kick back and play some games with the nerds.

I have actually been working out again too; last week I logged four days. Nothing too crazy, putting in about a mile and a half each time, but it felt great to be back on the streets and, honestly, even in the gym. My foot is back to 100 percent, and I'm feeling good to go. I am debating on starting up another training program because it really, really helped me stay on track. I have been thinking about doing an 8 to 12 week half marathon program, just to maintain my level of fitness—but I am open to suggestions! For all of you marathoners out there, what did you do to start back into training after a big race?

It will be interesting to see which personality will dominate the next several months before I start working toward my next race goal. I hope I can find an appropriate balance that lets me accomplish everything that I want to accomplish.