It's so hard to stay motivated when you've been sick with a cold for ten out of the past 24 days.

I don't know when I got such a delicate constitution, but there you have it. I'm coming down off yet another cold. As a result, my workouts have been spotty. I trained hard during the days following up to the cold, stay sick for about six days, start up again, repeat. I haven't even bothered to step on the scale (last I checked I think I was at 145), but I do feel awfully bloaty and soft.

This could be due to period issues going on, but I digress.

It's stupendously cold here in Chicago, on top of it all, and there's been snow and slush, and at the end of it, it makes it all hard to want to do anything but crawl back into your footie pajamas at the end of the day with some hot soup and chai tea. I know this is part of the deal of winter, of this time during winter in particular. It's prime hibernating season, and everything in our bodies just yearns for carbohydrates and comfort. All that Vitamin D deficiency wrecks havoc, man.

But, now that the sniffles have subsided, I'm doing my best to fight back. The eating quality has been fine (probably could use some more fruits and vegetables, but I chalk that up to being sick and only wanting chicken soup), but it's the workouts that are suffering. Again, the whole being sick the majority of the month contributes, but I have to get right back up on that horse or fall victim to the dreaded winter blues.

They say you need to schedule your workouts like you do any appointment, so that's what I've done. I have a gym at work that I've been using, in addition to the gym I belong to, and I'm hoping that adding things like "Weights - noon" into my Treo, with repeating schedule and alarm, I'll treat these sessions with the same attention I do any other meeting or social engagement.

Especially since I've just agreed to do this.

That's right. An ultramarathon. Thirty-one miles of love.

Please understand, I'm not running this whole thing. No way, no how. My friends don't plan on running the whole thing. Hell, I doubt I'm even going to finish. I fully expect to clock in at 13-, 14-minute paces, if not longer, considering I plan on walking a great deal of it. But it's one of those things that no one in their right mind (unless they've trained hard core for such a thing) expects to finish. But my friends are going out to do something fun together, to spend an April Saturday outdoors, and that's it.

Finishing, thankfully, is not the point.

But still, 31 miles is a hike, and if I run/walk even half of that we're talking a half-marathon. It'll be quite a day.

So, winter doldrums and excuses have no place here. None at all.

Posted by Erin at 07:30 AM | filed under: Random