Listening

[mrissa]

One of my general Mrissish rules is, "Listen to the body." This is often useful: I can manage to improve my mood by noticing that I need a cup of water, or to be more productive having lots of veggies at noon and remembering to throw in some small protein source with that. And so on. As with the rest of life, paying attention can be remarkably effective.

But -- as with paying attention elsewhere in life -- occasionally it is a pain in the butt. For awhile, riding 5-6 miles on the bike several times a week was enough. Now I'm noticing that I get fidgety at night unless it's 9-10. This doesn't mean that I have more energy to stay up later -- it just means that the last few hours I'm awake are less pleasant. The solution to this is obvious, and I'm doing it. But it takes more time, and I have the feeling that by the time 9-10 miles at this uphill setting takes the same amount of time 5-6 miles used to, it won't be enough, either. Ideally there will not be an infinite upwards-spiral of more bike with the threat of fidgets hanging over my head. We'll deal with that as it comes, I guess.

In the meantime, it's meant a shift in routine. Five or six miles was often doable before the dog woke up; nine or ten will almost always come after the dog wakes up (with her staring at me from the couch and sighing disgustedly -- this is not one of the good monkey games), and reading through all ten miles turns out to be no longer comfortable on my back even with the recumbent seat, so I've been watching bits of Veronica Mars Season 1. For every problem a solution, and it's nice when extra Weevil counts as a solution to something.

I am not going to finish writing this book today. I am not going to finish writing this book this week. This is not to remind you folks but to remind myself: the book is allowed to run away with me a bit, but not indefinitely. So.

Comments

[cadithial.livejournal.com]

Mriss for the Tour de France :)

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

Well, more bike is not such a bad thing.

At least you're not craving more cowbell.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

I realize that you are the one listening to your body. (I am out of range of your body, except your typing fingers, and listening to those is a different kind of mixed metaphor.) Still and all. Could your body be trying to tell you it would prefer another kind of exercise, rather than just more of the same? When I could swim, I found 30 minutes of swimming left me a different flavor of tired than 30 minutes on an exercise bike. Lifting weights is yet another different flavor of tired, and a person can increase intensity without making the workout take longer. Redbird usually speaks for weightlifting, but it is so obviously good for her mood I can advocate for it as well.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I also lift weights and do yoga and Pilates. And the thing is, while it may well be that swimming (to take an example of something else I like) would tire me more efficiently than biking, the total amount of hassle involved in adding more biking is still far less because we have the bike here, whereas I would have to find a swimming pool that had lap-swimming time available, and I would have to get ready, drive to the pool, get cleaned up after, and drive home. I would almost certainly have to do it around when the pool's lap-swimming hours were rather than when I felt like it. And so on -- clearly, none of that stuff is an insurmountable obstacle, but it certainly makes a little more biking more appealing at the moment.