Fun & Fitness over 50

The Jungle encroaches constantly upon everything. You have to keep hacking away at it ... constantly ... or you'll be overwhelmed. And you have to keep at it day after day. It doesn't matter if you cleared your way yesterday, today it's back again.

What is this "jungle"? Things that consume your time.

It looks like I may not be able to bike or go to the gym this week until Friday! Tomorrow I have an appointment with my audiologist (I have hearing aids) after work, Tuesday is my work late day plus I have to vote for the school budget after work, Wed. I go away for a work related seminar and won't be back until late, Thurs. is another seminar that will run late.

So, unless I ride very early in the morning, before work (horrors!) ...

Actually, when I first thought about the subject for this post, I was going to complain more. That was before I took my ride today.

After church, I wanted more than anything to take a nap. But I knew better than that. Charles went for a ride before church with 2 other guys but I couldn't go because it was my week for chair duty (Charles has another week). Our church is a multi-use facility, basically a gym, and the chairs have to be setup and taken down before and after every Sunday service.

So I missed that group ride but I knew i needed to take a ride rather than a nap since: 1. I might not be able to ride most of next week as I stated above and 2. I would feel much better about everything if I took the ride and 3. I would feel terrible both physically and emotionally if I just took the nap because I would never get the endorphin thing going and I would feel guilty about not having done the right thing.

I took the ride!

Wow, it was a great ride, too! Of course the weather was perfect. Just the right temperature, partly sunny with low humidity and low to no wind. mmm-mmm-MMM! And I was feeling good. Probably tuned right up after riding every day faithfully all week. After warming up, I was able to hit it hard again and again and feel great doing it. I could have ridden 2 or more hours easily but I promised Mrs. MTBMan1 that I would be back in an hour and a half and I didn't want her to worry and I didn't want to call because I was afraid the call might interrupt the GPS on the Blackberry.

But that's OK. I was satisfied. Better to quit wanting more than wanting to quit with more to go. At least in this case.

As far as the encroaching jungle goes, at least these are not ongoing commitments. That's what really gets you. This week is a special case so I guess I can tolerate it. It's not going to be like this all the time. I just hate to lose that sense of well-being I get from riding/working out every day.

On a related note, MapMyRide.com is doing the 2010 Le Tour Challenge again this year. This was really fantastic last year. Long story, short (you can read the details on the site), it got me to ride every day that the Tour de France rides over the course of the event. 21 days! That was where I really got a good taste of this "ride every day" feeling. You really should check it out. The incentive is that they do random drawings every day and give away really cool prizes including some high end bikes! Do it!

As for today's awesome ride, you can check out my stats here on sweat365.com.

And here's the map from EveryTrail.com. I call this ride "random" until I can think of a better name because I didn't plan where I was going, I just "winged it"!:
random at EveryTrail


Map your trip with EveryTrail

Oh yeah, after the ride I took that nap! ;-)