I'm bonking

I'm bonking and I'm not even on my bike.

I had a hard workout week last week that ended with a 3-day workout bender - hard night at the gym on Thursday, my first spinning class ever (taught by a friend) on Friday night, and a 3-hour ride outside on Saturday morning when it was crazy windy and the windchill was biting. I followed that up with too much alcohol over an extremely fun dinner with friends on Saturday night and then I hit the wall on Sunday. And I've spent this last week fighting a looming scratchy throat and headaches while working long hours at work trying to meet a deadline. I've been drinking the EmerGen-C's and tea, and sucking down Halls Defense like nobody's business, but I keep waking up feeling the same. I'm starting to think it's stress induced.

The one thing I really dislike about bike racing is that I always feel guilty when I'm not training in some way, shape, or form. It pisses me off. I shouldn't feel guilty about that, but I totally do. Unfortunately, the nature of my work requires that I occasionally have to work some long hours to meet deadlines. I like my job, so that doesn't bother me, except for the fact that long hours at work is not conducive to training. So I find myself stressing out that I'm trying to meet a deadline, and then stressing out that I'm not working out, and then stressing out that I'm stressed out about bike races that aren't until April! I'm just not good at this whole "balance" thing - I honestly don't know how people can balance a full-time job, families, and training/bike racing all at once. And I even live with someone who seems to do a much better job with it than me, and even gets some good race results come racing season. I just get tired of not having a life outside of work or cycling. I miss my old life sometimes. And I'm just a Cat 4 - is it really worth all the time and stress just to be able to keep up with the other Cat 4's?

There are times when I go without riding or training for a few days, and I enjoy the things I get to do in lieu of sweating my ass off, and those are the times that I tell myself that I need to be done with this whole bike racing thing soon. Then I'll go for a ride that weekend, and I'll remember why I'm not ready to give it up just yet. But damn, I feel like I'm too old to be trying to squeeze so many things into one day, one week, one year.

But today Dis was the savior because he sent out the final design for our sweet new LGR kits! So this morning I may have been ready to give up bike racing, but then I saw the kits, and I realized that I'm really excited about this season, even if it could be my last.

Morning

They say you need 8 hrs of sleep...I need at least 9.
I'm definitely not a morning person, but I'm not really a night owl either.
I don't wake up to an alarm unless absolutely necessary...
Instead, I just sleep until I'm ready to get up, which is usually between 8 and 8:30.
When I do need to set the alarm, I wake up many times during the night in panic that I've overslept.

I always maximize my sleep time - I sleep as late as necessary, then get up and get ready to go to work in record female time.
During the work week, I don't mess around in the morning - while I want to ease into my day mentally, I physically just want to get up and out of the house as quickly as possible.

So when I finally get up in the morning, I want to be left alone for that mental ease.
I don't like sharing the bathroom or the closet - stay out of my way or deal with the consequences.
I don't like morning chit-chat (at home or at work) until the coffee's had a chance to kick in.
I purposely wait until my roommate is gone in the morning before getting out of bed...it's better for both of us that way.

I'm lucky to have a job with flexible hours.
They seem to understand that letting their employees work the hours that suit them best is much more efficient, and the company benefits from that.
But I still have to bill my 40 hrs every week, so that means that I normally work later at night.
Which is fine and dandy until race season rolls around, and I have to be at Opus by 5:30.

I actually worry about being a bad mother because mornings are so painful, and kids don't care what time it is.
People with kids say your schedule will change, but I'm skeptical.

One recent morning, I decided to go to the gym before work because I had something going on that night.
It was a good idea in theory.
At one point during my workout (at 6:30 am), I thought how nice it would be to do morning workouts on a regular basis.
By the time I was done, I thoroughly regretted my poor decision.
I could hardly function all day, and that two hours of missed sleep affected me for two days after.

I'm sure there are plenty of non-morning people out there who embrace their anti-morning-ness, and just deal with it.
But I've always wanted to be a morning person, so I can't seem to let it go.
Yet I'm apparently not willing to do anything about it.
So perhaps it's time to embrace.
I'll think about it over coffee.

What the?

In the past few months, I've had four friends get their car stolen - 3 Honda Civics stolen from Minneapolis, and one Honda Accord stolen just today in St. Paul. And a few weeks ago, a co-worker was car-jacked (at gunpoint) in Uptown. And a friend of a friend was also car-jacked recently in Hopkins (the guy opened his jacket to show that he had a gun). What the hell? And then there's all the bike theft...including one of mine a while back. And every night the news stations report that there was another murder. I've heard that crime in Minneapolis is significantly up, although I'm not finding any really good valid statistics through Google. Smithers must know. Maybe Tuffy? Someone please provide me with the statistics that I'll regret having asked for. Is it really getting as bad as it seems or am I just being paranoid (I've been known to do that)? I realize crime in Mpls isn't half as bad as some other large cities, so don't give me that whole lecture on growing up too sheltered. I'm just saying that it seems to have gotten noticeably worse in the past year, and I'm just wondering how much worse.