You know the regular (and dull) debate about whether Britain is going to have a "double-dip" recession? (Where a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative growth in GDP, and a double-dip recession is whether you have two of those events separated out by one or more quarters of GDP growth. Sorry about the explanation; it's rare my economics degree comes in useful these days). Well, at the moment we seem to be avoiding that by the skin of our teeth. My training, however, is definitely having a double-dip, and whilst that's not because of my mental health, as you might be led to believe by the title of this post, it is having an effect roughly in that direction.
I'm working at home today, just like I was on Friday. That's four consecutive days at home when I could have trained. And yet, I've done nothing, zero, zip, etc. I've been looking for the reasons why, particularly in the light of the fact that several riding buddies were off doing their first century sportives this weekend.
The reasons aren't hard to find: lack of a short- or medium-term goal, no training plan. These equate to no motivation - I need to have something to aim at; mindless training or gym-going are not my bag. So why don't I just sign up for some sportives or audaxes? Two reasons: the first is that I'm off to the physio on 2nd April to get my right leg problem diagnosed and some work started on it, and I'm reluctant to both threaten the improvement I can feel in it, or start cycling training when I could be back on two feet in a fortnight. The second is "done that, been there" syndrome. Of course I haven't ridden all the available sportives, or audaxes, or even the majority, and certainly not all the interesting ones, but I just can't get excited by the thought of riding my bike 100 miles on UK roads, not even nice, picturesque, interesting ones. I did that for a good few years, and whilst the rides would still be very hard work, I can't get past that "so what" feeling.
I need something new. So, I signed up this morning to do a 300 km Audax that starts at 11 pm. Yes, that's the 11 o'clock at night time, rather than dateime. I've never ridden through the night and into the dawn - now that sounds interesting. I'll do that in April unless the physio explicitly bans me from riding. I also saw on Countryfile last night something called 'adventure racing', which looks like a mixture of cross-country running, mountain biking, and orienteering. That looks fun too.
If I'm completely honest I also got a bit distracted over the weekend. The house needs some work on it; all my eventing over the years has restricted the amount of time I've spent doing maintenance, and there comes a time in every man's life when he just has to re-gloss his bannisters. I also went car hunting - I will shortly have to buy one, and whilst I'm trying to not spend too much money on one, I've got a pretty restricted list of what I want, and that means travelling round a bit. Unlike other people, I enjoy it too. I would have bought one yesterday had I not been beaten to the punch by about 30 minutes.
Right - enough lunchtime wasted with this nonsense, I'm off to try to get my work done in time to at least create the possibility of pulling on some lycra later...
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