Well, yesterday was our first outdoor bike workout and I have to say that I'm sure it will be nothing but improvement from here. How's that for a "glass half full" spin on a crappy ride!
Let's step back and set the scene. I have a not-so secret and fairly consuming addiction to Battlestar Galactica. Now before you think I've gone totally off my nut, this is connected! I finally got access to the season three episodes and I am attempting to catch up before someone blows all the surprises in the cliffhanger season-ender. So on Tuesday night I got to watching, manged to "just one more episode" myself into a very late bedtime.
Getting up for my morning swim was tough but it turned out to be a good workout (400m warm up and 1,500m easy swim - was planning on 1,000m easy but managed to "just one more lap" myself into another 500m).
The first hour of the morning was great. Sadly, at 8:30 things rapidly got not so great. The swim on top of not enough sleep, mixed in with lingering fatigue from the Populaire and allergies/the start of a cold (in the spring it's hard to tell) wore me out pretty quickly. I grabbed a second coffee in the morning and that bolstered me for a good 20 minutes, followed by a rapid decline. From there things got progressively worse throughout the day - cranky, short attention span, tired, etc.
Before heading out for my ride I figure I'd catch just one episode of BSG (I'm in control and can quit any time I want!). Due to some technical issues I couldn't catch the whole episode and had to leave for the ride without knowing if Kara made it off New Caprica or not - very distressing!
As well as watching BSG I had the brilliant idea of digging into the stinky french cheese I bought on the weekend. Now, this news may surprise you greatly, but it turns out that eating stinky french cheese before a time trial, and perhaps before any workout, turns out to be a very, very bad idea. It sits heavy and the "lingering nutty aftertaste" really isn't as thrilling as you'd expect.
So, despite everything that went wrong all day, I got to the time trial start expecting to lay down another blistering PR because that's what the spring's been all about. It only took thirty seconds into the time trial for me to realize how very wrong I was.
Instead of accepting the situation and trying to do the best I could, I got mad. Not the kind of mad that gives you the push to go harder and faster. Noooo, no such luck. This was the kind of mad you get from an over-tired eight year old who's been denied a treat and stomps her feet and refuses to go any further and yells "I am ANGRY!" That kind of mad.
Not only was I angry!, I was tired!, and my legs were sore!, and I lost my bike computer! so I had no idea how fast I wasn't going ...
Pretty charming.
Eventually I came across the front runners of the group on their return ride. By this point the eight-year old had matured a bit. Or gotten tired and decided to have a nap, she didn't really let me know. Anyway, I was still mad and didn't want to make eye contact with the returning riders or have them encourage me, I just wanted everyone to leave me along and get the ride over with. All I needed to do was have a yelling match with my mother ("You don't understand me!") storm to my room, crank "Hungry Like The Wolf" (Simon Lebon would understand, he was choice!) and sulk. Yup, good old 13-year-old hissy fit.
At the end of the ride, not satisfied with just being in a bad mood, I opted to go back to my overly self aware 20's and to beat myself up for letting a bad workout put me in a bad mood. Yeah, let's just kick myself when I'm down! Then, for some absolutely idiotic reason, the realization "I'm not cranky because I had a bad workout, I'm cranky because I'm cranky" made me feel better. This was so totally and inexplicably stupid that I couldn't do anything other than laugh at myself.
I caught up with Bronwyn shortly after and we had a good chat on the ride home and the evening ended well. I got home in a good mood, Kara escaped from New Caprica (I should never have doubted her!) and all was well in the world.
So, the moral of today's story:
- Lack of sleep does bad things to me
- Stinky cheese is good, but not before a workout
- I need to lighten up on myself when I'm having a bad day
- If binge on BSG this weekend I can get season three out of the way and resume my life (at least until the playoffs - then I'm doomed)
2 comments:
Hey...When I post, does the Japanese show up?
I'm having the worst time navigating because it is all in Japanese. I might as well use it
おめでと ございます！ Way to battle through.
Yes, the Japanese does show. Now you can insult me and I'll never know! Although, where's the fun in that?
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