Joy here...
...Okay, so the snow began falling on Thursday, and then it just kept on falling and falling and falling until sometime late Friday night. And to make matters worse, at first the snow was freezing rain (the kind that pellets you like a million little frozen needles) and then on top of the layer of ice that the freezing rain left, more snow fell, making the world into a slippery death trap.
Now I've written before about Seasonal Affective Disorder, and the crummy mood that winter often gives me. And even though we've only been back from Malaysia for two weeks now, I can assure you that with this onslaught of snow that turned the world white from sky to ground and everywhere in between dipping the world in an unrelenting absence of pigmentation, as if the world and everything in it were dipped in a big vanilla milkshake, I felt so utterly full of hate. I hated the world. I hated everyone in it. And I hated myself.
You see, I took up running at 30 years of age, and by 33 years old I ran my first ever running race; by 34 years of age, I had run 6 races in a 12 month period, with two of them being half marathons (my first one in Toronto and my second one in Singapore) and one of them being the epic 30km Around the Bay race in Hamilton. And then this past summer, I spent my time building cycling fitness to a level that I'd not even known possible before, building friendships and increasing my goals throughout the summer until I found myself on a 100km bike ride!
I thought that I'd run my first full marathon by age 35 and be in the best shape of my life ever. But as that marathon loomed large, it looked like I was cycling more than running, and then it happened that the full marathon was the same weekend as my grandma's 90th birthday, and so I figured I could just put my marathon goals on the back-burner for a while. What this has meant is that since turning 35, which coincided with the end of the cycling season (i.e. the Summer of the Sisterhood), when I only did the odd ride here and there on my new cross bike, my fitness and motivation began to slip away like dry grains of white rice through my fingers.
With the resumption of my weekly spinning and strength training sessions on Thursdays, I came up with a plan that I thought I'd stick to to get me through the fall months. I didn't stick to it. Not at all. Not one iota. Basically, throughout the fall of my 35th year, I ran a bit, did my weekly spinning and strength training, and did the odd ride. I let my fitness fall away, and then we went to Malaysia where I drank and ate my way through Kuala Lumpur (see my food posts Part 1 and Part 2 to get a little sampling of some of the foods that we indulged in for our nearly three-week visit in December).
So the gist of all this background is that with the start of 2012, the year in which I will turn 36, I am now struggling to get myself back into some kind of shape, and this struggle is happening within the context of a cold and snowy winter when I've traditionally found it hard to do anything other than get out of bed, even in the best of all possible circumstances.
The only thing to do, is to JUST KEEP GOING! I've said that before, and I'll say it again: just keep going, just keep going, just keep going...
So out into the snowstorm I went...running the 1.6kms to my spinning class, spinning for 60 minutes, and running the 1.6kms back home, before returning to the same gym that afternoon for 60 minutes of strength training, and then the next day with the ongoing snowfall, I laced up my new balance minimus shoes and headed out for a 7.5km run. That's a start, and I'm going to just keep going...
I'm going to sign up for my next 1/2 marathon at the end of May, set my sights on doing a women's time trial series on the bike throughout the summer, maybe even do my first-ever triathlon in Malaysia in August, and finally, yes, FINALLY, do a full marathon in October.
This will mean that from May 2011 to May 2012 I will have completed a total of zero races, but then I'll be back in the game again for 2012. I find that I'm much happier when I have a goal to plan for and something concrete on which to hinge my training agenda. Otherwise, I'm just liable to look out the window at all the snow, roll over, and go right back to sleep!
Over and out,
Joy
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