EVAPORATING PLANS

If nothing else, this newfound motivation has me thinking about my exercise routine more. Although I wouldn’t say I’m “training” yet, I am more aware of my exercise plans for the day and week – as well as what’s taking place from week to week. The nice thing about this approach is that it makes me more committed to training through the winter. Last winter it was easy to just let things slide when the weather got crappy. But now I feel like “crappy” will have a different meaning – I’m more willing to venture outside because I have a race on the calendar. And if things do get really bad I’m more likely to find other alternatives to get a workout in.  

Recently I mentioned doing my best to get one workout in per week despite the conditions. I guess that’s easier said from the comfort of my computer screen than the reality of outdoors. Yesterday’s plan was for a lunchtime run with some threshold work throw in. As I worked through the morning, I could see those plans start to evaporate as just enough snow fell to make things sketchy. I’m talking about less than half an inch of snow. But that was enough to leave me feeling uncomfortable with picking up the pace. Normally this wouldn’t bother me, but lately we’ve been having some thaw/freeze cycles taking place. The thought of hitting a patch of ice covered by a little snow doesn’t make the harder effort worth it to me. Instead, I just ran an easy 5 miles.

I can still remember a blog post I wrote years ago after we got about 2” of snow and the roads were a slushy sloppy mess that made running unenjoyable. At the time I was Nordic skiing a lot, so I juxtaposed photos of the sloppy roads and the freshly groomed corduroy of the ski trails. I think the title was something like “You Choose” – implying why would anyone run in that footing when they could be skiing instead. I bring this up because of the recent conditions, but also because Tuesday night I went for my first ski of the season. There’s no denying that it’s incredibly fun and a great workout. Of course, being a perfect 28 degrees helps a lot too. It’s just nice to have options to help maintain my fitness in the winter.

Quote of the day;

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” – Lao Tzu