Snowball effect

Workout: 2.1-mile walk with Denali

This morning was one of those mornings. You know, the kind of morning where you have great intentions but before you can take a bite of your egg white bagel thin, things start to unravel.

Or, in my case, pile on.

I had to get the steak marinating for tonight’s dinner – steak sandwiches with horseradish mayo.

The cantaloupe had yet to be cut, and I needed some to take for my afternoon snack. The same went for the carrots and the cauliflower.

My rumpled hair, left over from yesterday’s braids, needed to be flat ironed. (Though, in retrospect, it wasn’t worth the 15 minutes because I wore my hood this morning.)

I needed to stop at the grocery, which is across the street, to pick up some veggies to complement my embarrassing lunch – a Lean Cuisine (Orange Chicken with rice, red peppers, yellow carrots, roasted almonds and edamame).

Denali was begging for a walk and seeing as I had no intentions of going home at lunch because it’s snowing - again – it was necessary to keep the beast from chewing up the second bedroom.

And it needed to be done before 8:30, when I needed to start scraping my car in time for yoga.

Yeah … you know where this is going. It went online, where I canceled my spot for yoga this morning and made a reservation for Saturday, instead. I figure as long as I get in my workouts for the week that it doesn’t matter when they happen. It’s not like I’m training for a marathon (unless child birth falls under that category).

But, before you call me a slacker, let me tell you something – my walk sucked. Denali pulled the whole dern time, the snow was slick and I couldn’t feel my thighs.

Do you ever reschedule your workouts?

The punisher

Workout: 75-minute Restorative Yoga class

Hands down, my Sunday yoga class is the toughest. It’s the class where I’ve been introduced to poses such as crow and headstand. It’s the class where you go through sun salutation A … and sun salutation B … and sun salutation C. My arms quiver in chaturangas in this class, my legs burn in warrior.

The Sunday class also is, on a regular basis, the most crowded of the sessions I go to. This morning, it was the most full that it has been – in fact I was worried that we weren’t all going to fit in the studio space.

And as I caught a glimpse of all the participants in triangle pose, I wondered what we were all doing there. Were we fond of this particular instructor? Is this the only session we could fit in this weekend? Did we just need to get out of the house?

Or, or did we like the punishment, so to say? Do we like the pain?

On the surface, we all would say that we would rather pay for something that felt good than something that felt bad. Yet, we are exhilarated to register for races, stare at a training plan, feel sweat pour down our faces. The agony that comes with just a mile left (or a few miles left, depending on the day).

For me, my favorite workouts are/were the ones where I wanted to die. Tempo runs in the 90-degree heat, 12-mile long runs, Jackie Warner strength sessions. I liked them because in their difficulty there was a great reward. Progress. Accomplishment. The sense of empowerment. I'll admit the bragging rights are nice, too.

How about you? Do you like the pain?

***

Something to think about …

At the end of class, the instructor read off some affirmations, and there was one that sung to me.

Don’t punish yourself for things that you have done. You have suffered enough. Free yourself.