Climbing Again.
It was surprising how much a few days of the flu and a couple of weeks knocked down by a sinus infection affected me. However, the squiggly lines finally leveled off and I started pushing decent watts for longer durations. Not like I was before I got sick, but at least I'm building again.
My performance charts are kinda like the stock market. Every once in a while there needs to be a correction. Like the stock market it's usually unplanned. One day everything is cruising along nicely, then the next day an errant virus or tweet sends everything into a death spiral. Eventually you level out and start chugging away again, promising yourself to be more careful next time. You won't breathe when you go to pick up the kid from preschool or bet so heavily on Bitcoin futures. But you will. You'll get careless, and before you know it you'll be knocked on your ass again. You get up, dust yourself off, and climb back into the saddle. You're a fucking moron.
The older I get, the more I have to do to reach the same targets. Instead of merely having the disciple to go for the Quarter Pounder Meal over the Double Quarter Pounder Meal, you have to go the extra step and not even pull into the drive-thru. Brutal. I try to get to bed earlier and maximize the quality of sleep I get as much as possible, but often that only moves the needle from "crappy" to "meh". I make any number of changes to fight the inevitable, but at the end of the day the best I can sustain is not losing any more ground. That's hard enough. Usually it's more like a sustained correction.
Still, the latest falling down incident gave me a glimpse of what it will be like if I don't dust myself off and climb back into the saddle. For as grumpy and fat as I am normally, it gets a lot worse if I don't turn the pedals. I have to keep moving.
Now that I'm climbing again, it's a little bit of a morale boost that helps motivate me to push a little harder and get on the bike when I don't really feel like it. Squiggly lines tell me I'm moving in the right direction, that all is not lost. The sweat I pour into the drivetrain (it's cheaper than chain lube) makes a difference. Anything to move the needle.
As long as I can keep plugging away, I'm not dead.
My performance charts are kinda like the stock market. Every once in a while there needs to be a correction. Like the stock market it's usually unplanned. One day everything is cruising along nicely, then the next day an errant virus or tweet sends everything into a death spiral. Eventually you level out and start chugging away again, promising yourself to be more careful next time. You won't breathe when you go to pick up the kid from preschool or bet so heavily on Bitcoin futures. But you will. You'll get careless, and before you know it you'll be knocked on your ass again. You get up, dust yourself off, and climb back into the saddle. You're a fucking moron.
The older I get, the more I have to do to reach the same targets. Instead of merely having the disciple to go for the Quarter Pounder Meal over the Double Quarter Pounder Meal, you have to go the extra step and not even pull into the drive-thru. Brutal. I try to get to bed earlier and maximize the quality of sleep I get as much as possible, but often that only moves the needle from "crappy" to "meh". I make any number of changes to fight the inevitable, but at the end of the day the best I can sustain is not losing any more ground. That's hard enough. Usually it's more like a sustained correction.
Still, the latest falling down incident gave me a glimpse of what it will be like if I don't dust myself off and climb back into the saddle. For as grumpy and fat as I am normally, it gets a lot worse if I don't turn the pedals. I have to keep moving.
Now that I'm climbing again, it's a little bit of a morale boost that helps motivate me to push a little harder and get on the bike when I don't really feel like it. Squiggly lines tell me I'm moving in the right direction, that all is not lost. The sweat I pour into the drivetrain (it's cheaper than chain lube) makes a difference. Anything to move the needle.
As long as I can keep plugging away, I'm not dead.
Comments
Post a Comment