I haven’t run my beloved trail since Monday night. I haven’t really done anything since Monday night. I’ve mowed the front lawn twice and the back lawn once (we fertilized…what a mistake that was!). I’ve gone for dinner, gone for drinks, gone shopping, had a nap, read magazines and books, ate cake, weeded my garden. I’ve done stuff…life stuff….I just haven’t gone for a jog. My body feels guilty about it. My brain a little bit too. I’ve eaten a lot of sodium this week, it’s that time of the month pretty quick too so I feel like a beach ball with legs.
I’ve been spending a lot of time dreaming about things I want to do. The 40km bicycle trail race in May, an extreme trail race (on foot) in Whistler next June, a half marathon in Seattle next July (maybe not both though, hm?), the Hydro Easement in Coquitlam (like a shorter but steeper Grouse Grind…called The Goat-something-or-other). I’ve been buying running magazines, researching trail training, investigating different kinds of trail shoes. I’m almost feeling something akin to depression for how much time I have been spending planning/thinking about these things and how little time I’ve spent actually DOING anything.
The problem is that my life is getting in the way of the life I want to lead. Sounds strange, right? I feel like I have too many hobbies….gardening, motorcycling, bicycling, jogging, reading and then all the other things that make up a normal day. I have all these fun things that I want to do…and I physically CAN do them now (that wasn’t the case a few months ago) and they are healthy and they make me happy…..but for all the best intentions in the world, I can’t seem to carve out time sometimes. Not that I don’t want to or that I don’t try…but when there comes a shortage of time, it seems like the thing that gets the boot the fastest are the ones that are exercise or fitness related. Why is that?
Plus, in the next few weeks, my stress level is about to go through the roof, there are only two of us who work in my department and one of them is leaving today…and it’s not me. 😉 Our replacement person has been here since Monday and has already left an hour and a half early and today she claims she has a bladder infection and she left at 10am. Super. I’m supposed to have two weeks of holidays coming up and if she flakes out or quits, I’m pretty much screwed.
So….what I want is to go and jog on MY trail, through the pretty smelling trees, listening to the birds chirping and my feet on the mulchy trail. But, sadly, that isn’t going to happen for a couple of days….which makes me sad….and want to comfort myself with food.
Fitty vs Fatty 
I would not beat yourself up about it. You’re certainly not a beach ball with legs! As I have come to learn, best laid plans and all… life has sometimes a different idea for how we should spend our time. If running is your hobby same as gardening, then one is going to overtake the other at some point. You can’t do everything all at once all the time, so you may as well enjoy the thing that you have chosen (consiously or not) and remember that next week is another week and maybe the garden will take a hit but the excersise won’t. or, you know, sell the motorbike! LOL… just kidding!
Don’t know why fitness always gets bumped down the priortiy line but it does.
The lack of exercise depression hit me too as I also hadn’t run since Monday. And the 9.5km that I had planned to do on Saturday, on a trail, got turned into a 5km street jog due to… well… life getting in the way.
Usually I just say “It’s ok, just roll with it, things will work out”, but when it comes to fitness and exercise I think it does take extra effort, a little life tweaking, adjusting and effort to get it done. And it’s important and worth it to get it done as we all know how goooooood we feel afterwards.
So this week, I invite you to join me in putting out a little more effort and cutting out a little of the other life stuff in order to get just ONE more run, bycicle ride or walk done than last week – which shouldn’t be too hard for either of us since we both only did ONE!
You game?
I am SO game! I’m important too and this week I am going to be more important than the laundry or the dog or the lawn mower! GR!