June 9: Why do people do this?

Exercise sux.  Let me state up front however that I have nothing but pure gratitude for the people who are helping me get ready for this tri endeavor and that my bad attitude is just something I have to get through, it has nothing to do with any of you.

So my lovely neighbor Jan offered me the use of her racing bike for the tri, and I rode 9 miles on it, in 90 degree weather, really high humidity, no big deal.  The bike is darn light, though, and I felt almost airborne a couple times.  Then I couldn’t figure out the gear shift and was only able to add on more oomph and not take it off.  Not really sure how I got up some of the hills in the neighborhood, because I was going so slow I almost succumbed to gravity and toppled over.  But the shoe clipping into the pedal was no big deal.  Pretty cool that my spinning shoes are useful also on the open road.  Yes, they are 10 years old and a fashion violation, but this whole event is gonna be a fashion violation for me.  I have paired together the most mis-matched set of exercise garmets between the swimsuit + jogbra plus biking pants combination, it’s a lost cause.  Even my helmet doesn’t match.  Enough about fashion.  I’ll be sure to get my nails done the day before.

Taking Jan’s advice about the killer part of the tri being the transition from bike to running and how I should practice that, I went right out on a run (still 90 something degrees and really high humidity, but felt like a spring day compared to hot yoga so I thought, no big deal!).  Except it was a big deal, and my legs felt like concrete, and my poor arthritic foot throbbed, and the whole run, done at a lousy, unpublishable pace, was just pure punishment. 

Hence the comment:  exercise sux.  I was so sore during the night I kept waking up (more than unusual!), this time due to physical pain, and finally popped some pain medicine to take the edge off and get some sleep.  I hate taking vicodin because it makes me feel SO annoyed and moody when it wears off, but I was willing to put up with that for some relief and sleep.  I’m annoyed and moody generally anyway lately, so I figured nobody would notice.