Because I'm Doing It Just For Me

This time I got in shape mostly by accident.

Most of you know that I LOVE to cycle. I began riding to work last April because it was something I could do and it was green. Saving the planet and all...

Riding to work was marvelous. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed the cool, quiet mornings and getting to work feeling that I'd already had my workout for the day and saved gas and money in the process.

And all of a sudden I realized. I was as fit as I'd been in several years. And it wasn't hard or painful to get here. I began doing something I loved and it turned out that it was good for me.

A minor injury took me off my bike in August and I searched for inspiration to maintain the level of fitness I had stumbled (or peddaled) into. And so it began.

Workouts were consistantly erratic. Just moving. Several times a week. No plan.

I remember being in the pool on a Fall afternoon, doing my time, stroke, stroke, stroke, gasp for air, stroke, stroke, stroke, gasp for air...you get the idea. I was about to stop short of my day's goal.

I was tired. It was hard. Wasn't it enough?

And then I remembered, from way back when, something I tell the kids.

Improvement is uncomfortable.

If you want to get better at something you have to push a little, work hard, keep going when you want to stop. So I did.

And it worked.

So now I have some goals. I'm seeing improvements. I'm enjoying the work.

I'm doing this for me. It feels different this time. This...attempt to be an athlete again. I'm swimming, I'm running (gasp!), I'm trying not to die during spin class.

I'm doing this because I love the way I feel when I finish. When I swim 1500 meters for the first time. When I add the fourth mile to a (very slow) run. When I don't die during spin class.

See...in this post there are a lot of 'I's.

Because I'm doing this just for me.