A mediocre month of mediocracy

My month of meritocracy is, well, mediocre. My first week started out great. I worked out in hotel rooms, spun during lunch, and had that "good hurt" pretty much every day. And my running came back quickly - I was feeling good with three miles after only a week, which was encouraging.

And then work travel started up again. I had an AMAZING work trip to Oregon Caves. It is absolutely beautiful. Its a fairly remote park, and I can't wait to get back. After coming back late on a Wednesday, running around all weekend, and then leaving early Monday for Arches, my 200 calories per day had pretty much fallen by the wayside. Its hard. I knew that, but in order to stave off sickness, I have constantly chosen sleep over exercise.

This is my last intense week of travel for the foreseeable future. My trip to Alaska was thwarted (boo!!!), but that means I will have a full three weeks before I head to DC en route to Philly for Christmas. A few scattered trips are planned for the winter - another voyage to Arches, one back to Muir Woods (my current locale) in March and a little bit of Lake Meredith thrown in there as well. For fun, I'll be planning long weekends in the mountains and a jaunt back to DC for the Rock N Roll Half Marathon in March. Its far easier for me to dedicate time to exercise if there is a scary race at the end of the tunnel.

But I digress. I'm getting fat. Fatter than I've ever eclipsed before. I've found that as my success at work grows, so does my waistline. Of course, normally when I am complaining about my pant size, its as I'm shoving a burger and fries into my mouth while on a work trip. Gee, why can't I lose weight? Its not a complicated equation.

I can't imagine how actual adults with families and responsibilities and work travel fit in exercise. I'm young without any other real responsibilities (kids, husband, PTA, etc) and already complain its too hard. How everyone isn't 4 million pounds, I'll never understand. It's surely the path I am on!

In any event. Lack of self-control for food, a desire to follow a training plan, and a realization that I don't want diabetes by the time I'm thirty has resulted in one conclusion: endurance sports. Usually each year I pick something somewhat difficult (first tri, move to denver, half marathon) and do it. This year's plan had been to do a half ironman (still on the list), but since I'm buying a better bike (will probably be worth more than my Echo), I have also decided to do my first century ride in the spring:

http://elephantrockride.com/info.html

I'm pretty stoked. So between the winter half, spring century, and fall half IM, here's hoping that by this time next year, I'll be complaining about needing to buy a whole new wardrobe because I'm just too darn small (we all can dream, right??).

Oh. And completely unrelated, I started reading In Cold Blood on the same day that the murders happened (November 15). It kind of freaked me out.

Why are you still reading this? Get up off that computer chair and exercise so you don't turn out like me!!!