Good Morning Sunshine

Between the horrible emotional trauma (/sarcasm) I endured by feeling like I BOMBED my last race, my back tweak (all better now, thanks), Zliten’s shoulder injury in which he is STILL not cleared to do any running, outdoor biking, or swimming, and this oppressive heat lately (love it for hangin’ out, grilling, cocktails on the patio, lake frolicking, HATE it for outdoor workouts), I have not been incredibly gung ho about the workouts lately.  Also, that it probably the most impressive run on sentence I’ve written in a while.  Let me distract you with a picture of me riding a Jackalope.

…anyhoo.  Yeah, not feeling it.  I’ve been doing them.  My goal has been 2 arms, 2 abs, 1 leg, 3 runs, 2 bikes, 2 swims, at least one of those bikes and runs outside.  Last week, I hit it all.  This week, the back waylaid me a little, as did work one day, and I missed one run (which would have been the outside one) and one ab workout.   It’s not the volume, it’s the effort in each one.  I just don’t feel like I’m rocking these things.  I don’t have that feeling like when I was training for the half last February and hitting paces and feeling flippin’ solid about it.  I don’t have the feeling like last year when I was training through the summer and getting prepared for my tris and just being EXCITED about what I was doing.

I’ve now been at this exercise thing regularly for the greater part of 4 years, so this is not my first rodeo.  This feeling comes and goes.  It’s awesome when it’s sunshine and roses, and a lot of the time, it is.  But when the mean little rainclouds start interfering with my mojo, you just have to get through it.  Get the shoes on and go.  Good tunes.  Find something to look forward to about each workout.  Failing that, just thinking about how great I’ll feel when it’s over.

Also, the combination of it being ridici-hot and work starting to encroach on my evening workouts a little too often without warning, I’m going to move the majority of my sweat sessions to pre-work.  I did this 5 days per week 2 springs ago training for my half, and I loved it.  I just fell out of it and I’ve not been able to regularly do that since.  Well, it’s time to bring it back.  I had a little mini tantrum last week because I had to stay late and then analyzed why.  It’s not that I don’t love my job and want to do what’s necessary – it was that I was going to have to miss my workout because the gym was closing.  So it’s easy to solve that problem – our arrival at work can be anywhere between 8 and 10 am.  I’m usually somewhere between 8:30 and 9:15.  I can switch that to 9:45-10 and just get my butt up a wee bit earlier and get my workout done.

It’s easy to say this, but it’s a little harder to put into practice when that alarm goes off.  I’ve intended to do some morning workouts but, let’s just say sleep won almost every time.  I am just not a self starter in the morning.  It’s gotten better, but I’m far from being happy about getting up and getting out first thing.  Tomorrow is my swim/bike brick outside with Du Loopers after work, but the rest of the week?  Attempting to shift to morningsauce workouts.  Since it takes 3 weeks to create a habit – my goal is at the very least 3 mornings each week are workouts.  To get an hour in before work I need to be at the gym or out the door by 8:30 at the latest, so that means 8 am good morning sunshine.  It’s only 30-ish minutes earlier than normal, but just like decreasing my 5k pace lately, or losing weight, it’s like climbing up the side of a mountain in a snowstorm to become comfortable with earlier mornings even by a little bit.

But, it must be done.  I need more outside time.  I need to not be throwing temper tantrums when life throws me a curveball.  This will help both become a reality.  Unless I find some other reason to pout about, which is highly likely, but whatevs – life can set the roadblocks up, I’ll continue to knock em down.

Maybe morning workouts will be just what I need to get my mojo back.