Me: Under prepared

I have to run a 5k tomorrow morning and I haven't run since January. I am also fighting a cold that sets off a coughing fit every time I simply climb the stairs to my office.

On Sunday I am riding in a 62-mile bike ride. I haven't touched the bike in almost two weeks, again, thanks to said cold-fighting. I can hardly breathe but I am getting energy back. This is going to hurt my butt and my hips. This is going to be painful. And it's only a little over half the distance of the entire Day ONE alone in the MS150 we'll be riding April 18-19.

This morning it hit me. I thought I had one more week. But no, our annual Easter crawfish boil is next weekend. NEXT weekend. I thought we had a weekend in between to prepare. The yard is a wreck from winter. I need to double check our crawfish supplier. And stuff, and stuff, and stuff.

Oh yeah, the 2-day, 180-mile MS150 bike ride is the very next weekend. I thought I had one more week to train. But I don't. In all, I only have two solid weeks. Is it possible to bust my butt on the bike every day for the next two weeks? Maybe, if my lungs cooperate through this cold.

Darn it. None of this was supposed to go this way. I was supposed to be super prepared for everything. It's not like I've been slacking. Where does the time go? Why can't I ride my bike every day for real, and train like I'm supposed to? Why isn't the yard done yet and the crawfish accounted for?

Where does the time go? The worst feeling is that of being under prepared.

The first year I rode in the MS150 was a nightmare. I swore I'd never ride again. That year I hadn't trained, didn't know what was coming, and just got on the bike and unexpectedly suffered. The last year I rode, in 2006, it was the most fun ever. I had energy, no pain, and we made our best times ever. It was freaking fun. Now I know how fun it can be and I am afraid that's not going to happen this year.

It really needs to be fun. For sooooo many reasons.

Pre-baby, I used to come home and run at 7:30pm when the air cooled off [or insert "ride bike or swim" here]. Then we'd eat dinner and watch TV. My biggest excuse for putting off the exercise was: I just ate dinner, I have to let my food go down! Now I come home, feed Anna, play, and do the bedtime routine. Sometimes I wish I had a live-in babysitter, but then I realize: no one replaces Mommy or Daddy for a bedtime routine (unless it's Nanna or Nanny Kristi who both spoil her with much more adoration and love).

Or else I go teach. Or else I prep my notes to go teach. I remind myself that teaching actually IS my part time job. So I should expect it to take up some of my time outside of class. And it does. I am teaching in the fall as well. However, the worst part about the first semester is creating all these lecture notes and reviewing material I haven't seen in years. So that takes up much more of my time than I'd planned for. It won't be the same in the fall.

There's always SOMETHING to do. And even my DVR is backing up.

I want to run in the evening when it's still daylight. I want to swim. I want to decide which I want to do and not have to plan for it. I want to go outside and enjoy the long daylight that is left in the evenings with lots of energy. It's wrong that I am buckled up indoors on perfectly wonderful, sunny and cool spring evenings.

The thing is, these days, when I have any spare time, the first word that comes to my mind is "rest". Not "exercise". So I am struggling. So none of the above things is to blame. If I really WANTED to, I could make it all work. Everyone is responsible for the choices they make. But I am choosing "rest" over "exercise" and I feel like I am losing a grip on motivation. So I guess that's my real complaint here. I used to be motivated all the time.

Pish....