excuses and cold weather

So no rain here in the past few days, but eff me its been friggin cold, and I'm not gonna lie...I haven't been doing much. I can easily picture drinking cinnamon dolce lattes and playing video games all day, as well as possibly getting larger. But other crap keeps coming up, or at least thats been my excuse. They say the hardest part about exercising is getting off the couch. Thats generally not my problem. I can't stay put that long, nor do I have the attention span to sit in front of the TV and play video games. The really hard part comes in opening the door and feeling that blast of chilly thirty something degree air.

I used to have a thing about running and swimming outdoors in cold weather, 50 degrees was my cut off for swimming outside and wearing shorts for my workouts. Since I've moved here I've found that I can run comfortably in shorts when its in the upper 30's. My toes are cold at the outset, and it generally takes a mile or two for them to get warm, unless its really wet. The legs are fine except for my knees. They tend not to ever warm up but its bearable. Still, its hard to just get my butt out the door. The alternative is the treadmill. Boo! I've gotten much better about doing my runs on the t-mill, its not the monotonous torture fest it used to be. The ipod helps immensely, and I do a lot of visualization, but it remains much less fun then running outside. However, as I write this, I feel like a panzy. I can remember running through the desert over Christmas break when I was in high school when it was super cold out. The ground was wet and muddy, and it was snowing off and on. I must be getting soft in my old age. Maybe may toughness is disappearing with my hair. Ahh. I'll get back out there soon enough.

The results from my first private Pilates session were positive. I found some new mucsles to make sore. More importantly, I can see where I'm going to gain a lot of benefit from it across the board. The goal now is to gain some consistency and start bringing everything together and set a plan for next year. I left my bicycle trainer in Austin, so I have to get a new one of those pretty soon. Most of the time its too wet and nasty to ride for me out here on this type of landscape, on my tri bike any way. The last thing I want to do is an endo over the front of my bike and break a colarbone or something.

Time certainly is flying by though. I can't believe how long I've been here already. Sometimes it feels like I've been here forever, but most of the time it feels like I just got here...crazy.

Good times,

ff