Good Motivation

Written Friday 19th March

Today was supposed to be an ‘easy’ day to get ready for Sunday’s Brisbane Bike Ride. I woke up with a head full of sinus so I walked the hills and felt much better. I stuck to my plan and resisted the urge to run home, and just enjoyed a brisk morning walk. I spent a few hours in town with Shirl, including a big lunch of veal scaloppini and when I got home I had a nice sleep on the lounge. Quite a deep sleep that lasted about an hour – a result of too big a lunch, I think; big meals sap your energy, as the stomach demands lots of energy to process the food that’s just sitting there.

Anyway when I woke up I was really sleepy, hot and sweaty and cranky. Everything was annoying me and I thought about cancelling the planned afternoon stepper session and continue to ‘lounge on the lounge’. Eventually I realised I would probably feel better after a hard gym session. It was a little hard to convince myself but eventually I got up and got dressed.

So I went to the gym, did a really hard workout and felt much better afterwards. My instincts were right and I must remember this- If I feel cranky or out of sorts, go for a hard session, and my attitude will improve.

Two other things occurred to me during this session =

I thought I was working hard on the stepper at a steady pace on Level 10 until some-one got on the stepper beside me and went faster than me, so I went faster to keep up. I ran out of breath but I realised I wasn’t working hard enough. In future I need to go faster, at least for part of the session (ie interval training)- find my threshold level at least once each session, and spend most of the session in Zone 2 (slightly breathless)

The other thing that came to mind was the idea of ‘just do it’ – when feeling unmotivated, just go do the session even if it’s not as hard as planned. When base training, it’s better to do something than nothing- the key is consistency. What’s more, when you are out there doing your session, what starts out as easy quickly reverts to the usual intensity. (This happens with my weight sessions regularly)
I’ll be interested to see how today’s session affects Sunday’s ride – my plan was to have an easy day of exercise but I think I went harder than I should have. Never mind, some good lessons were learnt so I’m happy with the results.

More later, journey on
James




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