No Excuses

 One thing that I pride myself on when it comes to my training is being disciplined about it.  Sometimes that discipline makes me a dull boy and more often than not Lori suffers for it.  It’s hard to make plans and have a social life when I have a long ride or run to do and I want to be in bed early to make sure I get those precious zzzzz’s.  I also really don’t drink that often while I’m training not for any specific reason, but I just tend not to.  

Last night however was one of those rare occurrences.  I had been exchanging texts with a friend who we hadn’t seen in a while and we decided to have a virtual cocktail.  I figured, one tequila while catching up and that would be that.  Well, the first one went down like water and so I had a second.  Jordan had a friend over and his parents were coming to pick him up so we had invited them to come in for a little while so the boys could continue to hang out.  They arrived and I ended the FaceTime call to catch up with another friend in real life.  Being the gracious hosts that we are we offered them a drink and I had another as well.  

It has become kind of a custom that whenever we get together with this particular family we play a game called Kahoot.  The way the game works is fairly simple, one person picks a topic and the computer generates multiple choice questions about the topic and everyone uses their phones or iPads to answer the questions for points based on speed as well as correct answers.  I have become somewhat of a legend in that every time we play I seem to win more games than everyone else.  Not sure if it’s my cat like reflexes or my knowledge of useless information, but they always seem to be gunning for me.   Last night was no different we started playing and I started winning even after 4 drinks!  This of course led to some good natured ribbing and after a few hours they left.

I went upstairs and fell asleep immediately which is nothing new for me I’ve always been able to fall asleep quickly regardless of the situation.  When I woke up this morning I had the typical cotton mout and a dull headache which was to be expected.  What I didn’t expect was the data from my Whoop strap.  I started wearing the Whoop about 6 months ago mainly to track my recovery during training.  When you wake up in the morning you get a recovery score and color based on resting heart rate, heart rate variability and sleep quality.  Typically my recovery is in the green with a few yellows sprinkled in the only ti,e I’ve ever seen red was the morning after the Ironhorseman when my recovery score was 1%.  This morning…….6% and red. 

Obviously the last thing I wanted to even think about was the hour plus run that I had to do today or the fact that it was frigid outside.  As the day wore on I started to think about it, I didn’t “have” to run, I “get” to run.  I had no one to blame for the way I felt this morning, but myself and life and training are all about balance.  I didn’t feel bad that I drank more last night than I had in quite some time, but I knew that I would beat myself up if I didn’t get outside and complete my run.  So I laced up my shoes, put an earbud in to listen to David Goggins book Can’t Hurt Me and I headed out.

When I was finished with my hour and change I felt great.  I was pleased that I didn’t make an excuse when I certainly could have.  Apparently January 17th is quitters day, the day when most people who made their new year’s resolutions give up on them.  Well today is January 16th and there is no quit because my goals aren’t going to accomplish themselves.

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