I'm A Crack Whore

Morning Workout
SWIM
Main Set: 500m / 400m / 300m / 200m / 100m

Random Comments: I wake up no later than 6:30 am every morning of the week, including weekends, yet I'm usually pretty cranky in the morning. I'm not a morning person. I'm not an evening person either. I think I'm a late afternoon person. Around 3:47. I'm a 3:47 person. I need to find a race that begins, and ends, at 3:47.

Evening Workout
BIKE (well, the trainer)
4 x (7 1/2 minutes in Zone 3 plus 2 1/2 minutes at Lactate Threshold)

Random Comments: I love these hard workouts on the trainer. Makes me sweat a lot. I feel like I'm getting extra exercise when I sweat. I'm shallow like that.
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It's been a week and a half of "serious" training for me and already I'm feeling overwhelmed. There's just so much to do and not enough hours to do it. My problem.. well, one of my many problems... is that I like to do everything, all the time. I don't want to miss a thing. So I strive to be everywhere, experiencing everything, all at once. Not being omnipresent, it creates a bit of a challenge. I really need to work on that omnipresent stuff.

(BTW, side note, I just had a sudden craving for mushroom pizza. Weird, huh. Anybody got an explanation? Maybe it's an omnipresent thing...)

So throw this 20-odd hours of weekly training in the mix, and it really cramps my ability to run around like an ADD poster child on a triple espresso. Instead, I wake up before the sun rises and exercise for an hour or so. I rush off to work and spend the day exerting about 15% more mental energy than I really ever have had. Fully drained, I come home after dark and workout yet again. By the time I've finished showering for the 2nd time of the day and swallowing some sort of food, it's 9:30pm, about fifteen minutes past the time I need to go to bed, rinse and repeat it all over again the next morning.

After only ten days of this schedule, I'm already backed up on e-mails, bill paying, errand running, food shopping and a variety of other activities pretty much required for basic survival. It's overwhelming. If it weren't for the exercise to calm me, I'd probably have a breakdown. How's that for a Catch-22, eh?

But wait, there's more. You see, despite the anxiety of being overwhelmed, the dread of never catching up and the fear of my life crumbling to pieces, I feel like I'm finally getting in the flow. And I'm loving it. Ah, the irony. ...Ain't life a bitch sometimes?

There's a rhythm you get with exercise at this regularity; a life rhythm. The consistency of the double workouts, the bodies ability to acclimate - I become starved for the exercise. It not only calms me, but it keeps my life in balance. Or at least it feels like it keeps my life in balance. Though I feel like I'm going up and down in that soothing, undulating rhythm, maybe there's actually nobody else on the other side of the seesaw. I may just be hanging on by a piece of thread. A very old, very frayed piece of thread.

That said, I know that the more I exercise, the more I will feel better about myself as that rhythm begins to control my life. It's an addiction. Maybe even an obsession. Wait, that's it. It is an obsession. Working out is like a drug - it gives me an emotional high every morning. And after I bottom out during the day, I starve for that fix again at night. Even though it may slowly tear apart certain aspects of my life, I take to it like a crack whore to the pipe.

My God, I'm a crack whore.

What happened? I used to be such a good kid. So innocent and fun loving. Triathlon has taken over my life. It has overcome me. But I don't want to let go. I can't let it go. It defines me. It soothes and balances me. I crave it. I need it. I want more. Give me more. Make it harder. Longer. Faster. Stronger. Bring it on, baby.

Bring it on.

I'll pay those bills tomorrow.