So I’ve been languishing these past few months. Watching the scale slow creep up and my bike gather a bit of dust in the corner of the bedroom (I moved it indoors when the cold, wet weather hit, though yesterday you couldn’t tell). Without a goal in mind, or a plan in place, I find that I just don’t have the motivation to get going. So to kick off the new year, I worked up a plan to get me back up to fighting distance (40 – 50 miles on any given weekend ride), and am trying to kick by Weight Watchers back into gear (I’ll save that for another dissertation).
Anyway, my plan has me going at six days a week, with Thursdays off, and Mondays an easy recovery ride. I scheduled Wednesday, Friday and Sunday for some hill or interval work and Saturday for my long ride but I’m already thinking, I need to cut one of those days back to a straight, steady heartbeat ride like I do on Tuesdays because, they’re hard. I mean they’re really hard and I really sweat and my heart pounds and then I dread doing them and if I dread doing them, well, I don’t.
But in the meantime, while the plan works well, I get up, I see what I have to do that day, I do it and for the most part I’ve stuck to it, I still have slip-ups. Like take Sunday for example. I woke up Sunday morning at 3:30am and could not fall back to sleep. I really did intend to ride that day but ended up falling asleep on the couch for two hours during the Giants game (and missed a good game to boot!), so I didn’t get to ride. Okay – it wasn’t the first time I skipped a Sunday ride, right?
Then today … ah yes today. Well, Anna comes to my house today. I love Anna. For the last 12 years Anna has come to my house every other Wednesday and cleaned it. Sometimes I think I look forward to Anna coming more than I look forward to Chris coming home. I mean, she arrives with a smile, she dusts, vacuums and washes my floors, she makes very little chit chat, and she leaves with a smile. I cannot say the same for Chris.
Anyway, so if Anna was coming to clean, that meant I had to clean. Oh c’mon, you know you do it too! Everyone has to clean before the cleaning lady comes; it’s a rule. The only problem? Because of the holiday, it’s been four weeks since Anna came, which means there was four weeks of junk to be put away. Four weeks of receipts to be filed, bills to be paid (and yes, we had Christmas and Chanukah during that time) … well I could go on but suffice it to say, my office was a disaster and needed some major attention before Anna could give it some major attention, not to mention the laundry, kids rooms, and the little “present” Fala apparently left for my mom in her room, in anticipation of her arrival in two weeks.
So, I spent the morning do all this stuff and then I spent a chunk of the afternoon doing it too. Then I had to get Sammi from school and take her to Religious School, then I had to come home and do some work though not nearly as much as I had hoped/intended, then I had t cook dinner, and oh shit, it’s 8:00 and there’s no flipping way I’m getting on that bike at 8:00pm!
What happens now? Guilt. Yes, as I sit here and type, feeling my belly trying to develop a bit of Dunlap Syndrome (you know, my belly done lapped over my jeans), I’m feeling guilty for not riding today (or for going to the gym this week to weight train but that’s another dissertation).
Yet, here’s what I love about journaling, even if it’s out there for millions (well, okay maybe four or five of you) to read, as I’m writing this, I work things out. I realize, “There’s always tomorrow!” (hey wasn’t that a song). Anyway, I’m already going to the gym tomorrow to meet my trainer. And then I am going to Weight Watchers. And it was my off day, so after I meet Rain for lunch, there’s no reason I can’t come home, get on the bike, and do 10 – 15 miles, is there! And I do feel better having a nice clean office in which to work and a nice clean house in which to live.
See that’s the great thing about plans, they can be modified. And that’s the great thing about guilt, it can be mollified.
Oh, so if you see me on the SlowTrav forums tomorrow around 3:00est, tell me to get off and get riding!
