Life's Tough, Get a Helmet

Not everything is peaches and cream, in life and in training, but more often than not the two seem to coincide...or collide? Maybe that's why they say to get a helmet :S Despite it only being 9 days into the month, April has been no exception. I came back from my "stay-cation" thinking I'd be refreshed and ready to get back into the swing of things. But really I just found myself living for the weekends again, sigh.

I ended up getting up at 3:15am the past two Monday's to do my long bike ride from Sunday. Now if there was any question about me being crazy, 3am makes me bat-shit crazy. I'm still baffled how I felt energized enough to get out of bed. But you know what they say, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". Little did I expect that by the time I got off work, I'd be hit by the boom-a-rang effect and pretty much fall victim to my bed for a few hours. Needless to say it kind of messed up my sleeping schedule.

So lets fast forward though to this past weekend, that's the good part. Friday night after getting off work, I ventured up to the north side to pick up my trusty training partner, as we had planned to ride for the first time outside the next morning. I was beyond ecstatic about this, so much so that I went over to Performance and picked up a ton of stuff-and-junk to be ready. Well around 9:30pm we were checking out the "proposed" weather report which said it was supposed to rain. The voice of reason, (that of my coach's fiance, Jeff) said he was all for mental toughness but rain is not something to tough out right now. I was slightly bummed but maybe Sunday would be better.

7:30am the next day I woke up, looked out the window and realized not only was it sunny, but it was WARM! Words cannot express how miffed I was, and well I seem to have a new vendetta against the weather man. Even still, I tried to make the best of it, so I headed to the pool with Kris. Apparently bad juju doesn't have boundaries because he had some leaky goggle problems and we called it a day. Ok, no worries, lets try running. You can't really have any problems running, right? Haha...haha...hahaha....

I still am not sure why this happened but my legs, actually more of my hips, ached and cried as I tried to get in a measly 6 miles. Are you kidding me body?! At this point I had just given in, and after about a mile and a half I made Kris stop so I could play at the park. We went another mile and a half before I pulled a detour and ran onto the beach to chase seagulls and play in the frigid water. Poor guy, here I make myself out to be training for an Ironman and his experience training with me is a wimpy 6 mile run broken up into child-like play. But it was just one of those days, and it only makes things harder to fight back.

After a much needed stop at Portillo's for a maybe-not-so-deserved-but-I-wanted-it-anyways meal of baked mostacholli and chocolate cake, we ran over to Fleet Feet to fix this goggle problem. Kris got a new pair of goggles and I indulged in a new pair of smartwool socks with some yankz. Sometimes getting a new something helps motivate training.

Ok so, my 1:40 run was kind of caboshed for the day, surely Sunday I would be able to go out for a nice long bike ride. Surely if I hadn't fallen asleep at 7pm only to wake up at 10pm would this have been easier. Or maybe if I didn't stay up until 2am and sleep until 11:30 the next day, maybe it would have happened. I can't say I was disappointed, seeing as I had already given in to the wacky-weekend woes, I decided that the trainer would be a safe bet.

If you haven't caught on yet, because at this point I certainly hadn't, I probably should have just not tried at all. But I am a go-getter kinda gal. So when I got home I decided to install the bottle cage I bought on my bike before settling in for a ride. Now it was about 4:30pm and I was hoping to be on by 5, but I noticed that my tires were flat. Which was frustrating because I thought I had just filled them. So I took the back tire off, filled it, and went to put it back on. But there is was, flat again. Ok, maybe it needs a new tube. I went through all the motions of changing the tube and luckily the tire was full. It was now about 5pm, so I worked diligently to get the tire back on. As long as I don't drop the chain....opps.....

I'll save you the dirty details, but basically another 30 minutes later I got the damn tire back on the bike but I was covered in grease and frustration....and somehow I split my finger open. Fabulous. After touching a hot pot a few times, at some point, you will finally realize not to touch it. At 7pm on Sunday night I realized this weekends training was a mess and I had officially waved my white flag.

I'm not sure if there was a helmet strong enough to protect me from the hard-fall of this weekend. There are always going to be obstacles getting in your way, trying to prevent you from getting things done. And when it comes down to it, the best thing you can do for yourself, the best helmet you can wear, is a positive attitude. It doesn't matter what brand or type of helmet you have, if you're not wearing it right, it's not going to do anything for you.