Another weekend has passed; another 10 miles run and 70 minutes of Yoga is over. I'm supposed to feel good about the experience but all I can feel is relieved that it is over. Lately I've been reading all sorts of tweets and status messages about people's exercise achievements with words like "awesome" and "great" ... I'm not sure whether these people manage to get something out of exercise that I do not or whether they are just big fat liars.
Now don't get me wrong, I am very pleased with the fact that I can and do run. I really am proud of myself and the discipline I've shown to keep this up for more than 3 years and I'm quite happy with the results in general. From a cardiovascular standpoint, I think I may be in the best shape of my life, I've not had back pains for years, and I don't even really get colds let alone the flu. These are all good things and good reasons to exercise, they are motivation enough but that doesn't make the experience enjoyable.
And it is all so tenuous. About a month ago we decided to sell our house and we wanted to complete some renovations before we did; new floors in two rooms, gut and replace a 2-piece bathroom, throw some paint on a couple walls, finish the list of niggly little things (weather stripping, replace a tile, fix mailbox, that sort of thing) ... in other words, a lot of time would have to be dedicated to the task while still working on business and consulting. Something had to give, in fact a few somethings, but one of them was my exercise routine. For more than 3 weeks I did NOT do Yoga, run, or even do a "Wii Fit Body Test" ... nada, nothing at all.
I was very active during that time of course but I wasn't doing much that was going to help cardio and zilch that was similar to Yoga. I didn't miss the routine at all, it was VERY easy to skip it. But now that work is done, my time and daily activity level have returned to "normal" and I have returned to my exercise routine. I didn't really lose much in way of ability, though my running time was noticeably longer the first day back, but I felt like I had to start all over again with the mental focus. Every step was a countdown to the end, every second seemed to tick by as a minute....it simply couldn't end fast enough.
This past weekend was the second one since the big break, I'm back in form for time and distance but I found it very difficult to zone out ... I can't say it was as torturous as last week but still so far away from enjoyable as to make a mockery of the word. I'll not stop, though, despite how easy and enjoyable THAT would be, that would be too high a price to pay (I do like being able to run, I just don't like to run).