Sums it up...

I love this comic sooo much. This time they nailed starting a new exercise regime. :D

Surprise...?

I didn't really mean it to happen this way. There was a plan, and I was sticking to the plan, and then I got overtaken by events.

(This does happen…)

The original plan went something like:

1. Do lots of stationary bike cycling, building steadily until I'm comfortably doing the distance between my house and work on a relatively high resistance.

2. Repair old bike/ buy new bike and start taking it out for spins at the weekend to get back in the habit.

(These two things can overlap, chronologically...)

3. Cycle to work, aiming for a couple of times a week then building up to every day.

What actually happened went something like:

1. Do some stationary cycling as part of the build-up to The Walk.

2. Abandon the gym for 5-6 weeks.

3. Explode back into doing exactly the same amount of stationary bike work as I was doing pre-Walk, but not much walking outside of twice-a-week gymitry

4. Decide to "go look at bikes" (after only being back at the gym for a couple of weeks).

5. Fall in love with a ridiculously slinky bike, pay out a wad of money for it.

6. Discover it won't fit in the boot with my partner's bike, which has just been repaired.

7. Cycle home, trying not to freak out over not wearing a helmet, reflective gear, etc.

8. Fail to die/ collapse/ fall off the bike/ be in enormous amounts of pain.

9. Realise that, in order for the bike to pay for itself, I will need to cycle it pretty much every day for 11½ weeks.

10. Wash all as much of my old cycling gear that I have specialist tech-wash stuff for in the course of The Great Shed-Clearance of 2014.

11. Despair that my old cycling gear still smells of 2½ years in a shed.

12. Look at the slinky new bike to cheer myself up.

13. Vaguely prep the night before for cycling into work the following day.

14. Flail in the morning between sleep-deprivation, the entrenched grooves of bad morning habits, the sheer irritation of people digging up the road just outside the house first thing in the morning, the flabby determination not to backslide on the very first day of Cycling Into Work, the sheer lack of preparation, and massive fit of nerves.

15. Set off late for work.

16. Take approximately twice as long as I used to (probably) due to:

a) lack of fitness

b) terror

c) unfamiliarity of new gears

d) having the seat up really high to compensate for knees, which means that I can barely reach the ground with my toes, so can't scoot along in a pinch (finding myself shouting "Sorry - I'm a Wobbly Cyclist!" at traffic... entertaining for someone, hopefully...)

e) being very circumspect about:

i) traffic lights

ii) potholes

iii) vans

iv) other cyclists

v) the pavement

vi) dismounting


So that's the story of how I ended up sitting at my desk in work this morning late, panting, with swollen feet due to the mad notion that I should cycle in The Boots, convinced I smelled bad, shaking lightly, with interesting hair.

On an unrelated note: anyone want some slightly odoriferous but functional cycling gear?

Just Do It #2

Quick, throwaway "motivational" phrases can be helpful, especially when you're exhausted and your body's drenched in adrenalin, and the buffer zones of carefully-constructed cognition are crumbling in the face of your inner waaah that just wants to give up and go home and, incidentally, eat a large plate of biscuits, or possibly ALL THE CHEESE.  So this tag series is for those small, pre-fabricated tools that help me get the chuff on with it.

So my latest auto-Tweet sharing this blog got favourited by @Inside_Tracker. I went to have a look, and they have some doozies of those cheesy inspirational bon mots that I implicated in my last post on this tag.

Oh, some of them are pretty good, don't get me wrong: 

"It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop."

and

"It's never a question of can you, but will you?"

which, okay, has some grammar issues all its own, but is reminiscent of that Ayn Rand quote that I have up on my desk at work, in its Zen Pencils form:

"The question isn't who is going to let me but who is going to stop me."

Quite a flawed individual, that Ayn Rand, but that doesn't make her statement any less true, or any less useful to people who've suffered from a form of training that leads them to expect to need permission to follow their ambitions.

Anyway, there are some properly silly quotes there too:

"There is no elevator to success; you have to take the stairs."

which is patently a lie (cronyism, inherited wealth, nepotism, blackmail, etc.), and:

"Training is the opposite of hoping,"

which is madness, because surely you need hope to start and persist through training. Surely "wishing" would work better there.

My favourite, though, is:

"Clear your mind of can't."

because I want to remove the apostrophe and send it back to them.

:)

Got sent some great links to motivational phrases by Theodore Roosevelt (among others) in the wake of the last post in this tag. Ima check those out and see if any can turn into tiny "come on, one more push"-type tools and will - of course! - share if they do.

Any of you got any more for me?