I was doing some thinking this morning. I know....crazy. I was thinking about the choices I had made yesterday in particular one decision. The choice to ride.
Here's the thing when you've got a full time job that you spend 40, 50 or 60 hours a week at, finding time and motivation some days to workout is tough. I don't know if would be different if working out was my job but I suppose it would be. In the end after a busy day in the office I had planned to ride from work to get my 2.5 hour ride in. As the day was coming to a close I looked east and it looked questionable (i.e. - wet and stormy) we get this this time of year in Seattle when it gets warm. I decided to drive home and ride Mercer Island which is a shorter ride but the weather in the foothills wouldn't drift that far west.
After driving home I went to get my kit on and I found myself really not motivated to ride. I didn't feel like I had much energy, my body had been sore lately, my hip and back acting up and just didn't want to go. I walked from my bedroom to the kitchen and back several times and finally I said "you need to go".
I put on my kit and grabbed the water bottles and headed out the door, right smack into the evening commute. It's not really that bad but the first 2 miles are basically waiting at traffic lights with the commute lemmings. The first 6 miles of this ride has a lot of short steep hills and I was amazed at how good my legs felt, I was just spinning up these hills.
My coach had prescribed just time in the saddle. The Mercer Island ride is a great little 20 mile out and back on the island (total ride is 36 miles). The first half of the ride I just kept the bike in the small ring and spun. At the turn I decided to push a bit the way back I loaded the bike into the big ring and got into a great cadence, my legs felt full of power.
I love this section of the ride because it twists and turns and the speed limit is 25 miles an hour. Many times a car (on Mercer Island it's usually a Porsche, BMW, Mercedes and the occassional Ferrarri) will come up behind you waiting for a spot to pass and then you hit one of the twisty turny sections and you're putting a gap on the car, they eventually will catch you and pass you but it's still great. I was holding near 30 mph and just under 300 watts for this entire section. I spun the hilly section the rest of the way home and and felt great.
This morning I felt great, I mean great. My body wasn't sore, my hip and back didn't hurt and I felt motivated to workout. This is what led me to think about the choice to ride I had made. Now let's be clear, the ride yesterday wasn't a tipping point but it's just one example of how our choices affect us. The choice to have a regular latte or non-fat, the choice to let a car merge in front of you in traffic, the choice to say please and thankyou, the choice to do your daily stretches and the choice to swim, ride or run. The choices we make affect our lives in ways we aren't even aware of and I believe it's like a bank account for your physical, mental, emotional well being. Will I think about every choice I make no we make too many of them each day but I think I'm a little more aware of how they affect my and others lives.
Next week I'm on vacation and am really looking forward to the the training I'll be doing. I've been scouting new rides on the map in and around the Columbia Gorge so I'm looking forward to exploring those rides. I already know one choice I will be making assuming the wind blows, that is the choice to windsurf (hopefully it won't come back to haunt me). Look for updates from the The Gorge.
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