The Bed Was Really Warm

Four days of the five-day work week I crawl out of bed at 4:52 a.m. By 5:12 or so I'm at the gym, and by 5:17 you can find me in the pool or setting up my bike in the spin room.

This morning I made it up half the stairs to the spin room before I stopped dead in my tracks. "I am too tired to work out today," I said out loud, a declarative statement to make it real. I was back in bed -- still warm -- by 5:30.

This decision normally kills me -- I genuinely feel better if I work out, especially during a holiday week, when I'll likely miss a workout or two -- and I think part of why I'm writing about is that it isn't bothering me, despite how weird it feels to skip a workout, unplanned, during the week while I'm healthy.

The goal today was to move my "day off" of working out to later in the week so I could get one last good workout before Christmas. And the goal of every morning is to get past the initial resentment of crawling out of bed. I do it all the time and like it -- even on the toughest days, I'm good to go once I get to the gym and, at the least, will do a very low-impact workout if I'm not up to speed. Not today.

My legs lacked strength. My eyes hurt from not getting enough sleep (it'd taken a while for me to fall asleep last night). I could barely process the thought of cycling up hills or doing jumps on the bike, let alone getting on a bike and taking orders from a spin instructor to go harder and faster.

I've overlooked all these things before and chugged through, or I've rearranged my workout schedule so I could still get the same number of workouts in and catch up on sleep. I think I'm secretly afraid that once I cave, I'll be tempted to skip again. You know of that slippery slope most people go through;I don't want to be one of those people who falls off. That said, I'm not most people, and I know it's good to catch up when you need rather than stress over about it.

Doesn't mean it's easy.