It’s no wonder most people throw in the towel (and shovel) and give up on fitness in winter.
I mean, if you plan to drive to your gym (or trail in my case) after a good snowin’, that means you’ve got at least two workouts awaiting you – the one you’re headed to – plus digging your auto outta an icy grave in order to get there. Admittedly, this can make you feel too lazy to be bothered. It’s really quite a commitment, that. Especially now that low temps are just the tip of the iceberg – the rest of which has started falling from the sky in flake form on top of few-days-ago’s layer and entombing my poor car. Yesterday, I had enough of a headache to do an hour treadmill run – but not to be bothered with shoveling and such.
“Excuses are like opiates. They block you from getting shit done.”
– Me. Just now.
Today, however, cabin fever was starting to wear on me.
Like a literal airplane cabin, the oxygen in my domicile starts to feel dry, recycled, and disgusting no matter how much I open the windows to let my abode breathe. Before long, I start to feel the itch of nature withdrawal as it spars with the aforementioned torpor. But, you see, laziness is far easier to give into if you dread cardio in the first place. If instead you’re an addict like me, that lack of willpower has a time and a place – and it’s def not between me and my fresh air jogging-drug. Thus, unable to stand it anymore, I descended into the arena in which our cars collectively sleep, powered on the ol’ ipod, and went to work with a shovel in hand like I was digging the grave for my own fat. That can be a good workout – shoveling – if you put your whole body into it and don’t act like a milktoast pussy. You can get your arms, ass, thighs, and even core pumping if your heart’s really in it. But about halfway through, when I was starting to feel mildly tired, I remembered why I was even doing this: because I wanted to GTFOutta here, hit the trail, and do a jog.
Then I realized, “Once I get there – there’s gonna be deep snow I’m going through…”
That thought alone was like a reset button of “I can’t afford to be tired! I still got that coming!”
And indeed, once I got there, the snow was definitely above-ankle deep. Lucky for me, however, somebody else (and their kid, it looked like) had paved the way for me with their giant feet. So, as I took to this winter wonder-trail world, I planned to click over into my awareness-state, and resolved to foot hop into e’ery one of those ped-pockets that were provided, perfectly. I was going to be brilliant. It was my first time trying this, but I was gonna get it right. I’d be a natural at it.
Mmmyeah.
That didn’t happen.
What did happen, was that for the first stretch, I was moving with all the agility the skeleton of one of those impossible-to-erect tents has – collapsing in some places, stiff in others, accomplishing nothing as the elements assault you… Then, once I reached the true challenge – the deeply powdered path – something akin to a gag reel of tire-run fails ensued for another good five minutes straight. Even with those foot-steps firmly planted there, I still was missing them left and right. This wasn’t what I’d envisaged. This wasn’t the athletic snow bunny ballerina in my mind’s eye at all. I looked more like just-been-born Bambi would’ve had he been trying to learn how to ambulate on ketamine in the middle of quicksand. For a moment, I paused.
The devil on my shoulder insisted rhetorically, “Why don’t you quit?”
But then the voice from my other shoulder spoke up too:
(Oh, what? You thought one’a them was an angel? You must be new here…)
And the voice said:
“No one ELSE is out here doing this. Just YOU. You’re the only winner.”
Like on New Year’s Day when everyone else was in a champagne coma and I was doing a 5 A.M. 5 miler.
I smiled and eyed my terrain like a monarch gazing out onto his kingdom which is beautiful when the starving commoners are hidden from view. And that thought suddenly spurred me into that hyper-focus somatic mastery I’d been hoping to educe form myself all along. And boom, I was in. For the rest of my run, this fact was a Pulp Fiction adrenaline needle affixed in my cardiac cavity and fueling me on. Suddenly, I was landing in each successive footprint at top speed with the hind leg power of a crack infused kangaroo propelling me quickly from one to the next, to the next, to the next. By the time I circled round and returned, it was already nearly half an hour. And as if my ego wasn’t already high enough on a massive dose of I’m-king-of-the-world, it OD’d and started foaming at the mouth when I came across a lady walking her dog who said the words every runner secretly hopes to hear on days like this, yet pretends to be offended by:
“You’re crazy! It’s freezing.”
Today, I was too simultaneously elated and exhausted to even front.
I just said thank you.
And like some karmic reward for being so fckking pleased with myself, I returned home to discover that someone had taken the parking place I’d painstakingly cleared out for myself before an outdoor cardio sesh fit for SEAL training. Now I had’ta do it again? It’s as if Saint Zeus was sardonically smiling down from his mountain and saying, “Myyeah, you think you’re deGrasse level badass? Then why stop at two workouts? Let’s go for a cardio trifecta! Pick up that shovel, bish!”
So I did.
And ya know what? Wasn’t so bad, Zeus. Worth it. I’d do it again.
In fact, I just might. Tomorrow.
Whether it’s a mid-shoveling realization that you still have a frosty jog ahead of you, or a mid-cardio ego-boosting epiphany, it’s amazing what our thoughts can do to the landscape of our inner worlds. More often than not, I don’t get it right. Today was just lucky – and I was lucky enough to put a brain bookmark in this infrequent phenomena of doing-it-right in hopes that I can refer to it on my lower-self days. So, what kinda self talk is snowflaking its way into your inner world? Find out by taking a peep around. Is it a postcard pristine scenery in there? Or is there just a soiled sea of muddy, shitty, three day old snow blocking in your car?
Whatever it is – pick up a shovel, and dig your way toward the attitude that gets you to the place you’d rather be.