Covid-19 reflection

Hey there, pilgrims,

I made subtle mention of contracting covid-19 in last week’s training update and since it’s been forefront in my brain, you get to read about it for a few minutes. I’m fortunate – and I credit this largely to my training, diet, and overall health although, yes I am vaccinated – that I had a milder-than-average go ’round with Covid-19, though not quite as mild as my girlfriend.

That being the case, I will say that several days in isolation is a long time when you don’t really have the energy to do anything creative or physically demanding, so it’s pretty easy for your brain to recede to the dark, dusty corners and even the strongest of us can start talking ourselves out of our own goals & dreams really quickly. I had Luann there with me, so I did have someone to talk to but when it came to matters of sadness and malaise, I was hesitant to go there – I did, and I’m glad I did, but not as soon as I should have.

I kept my diet on track through the whole isolation period because I wanted to heal fast, and I did get some time in on some creative woodshedding, but my outlook was way more grim than I ever really want it to be again. I was back on top within a couple gym visits, which serves to illustrate how important that is in my life – but the memory of going there sucked.

So naturally, with training this week I hit it as hard as I could, which may have been a mistake, but I’ve made way bigger mistakes. I swam a kilometer on Tuesday, and rode 37km on the bike in 75 minutes on Wednesday. Got 45 minutes on the treadmill Thursday and another 60 minutes on the bike Friday.

That Friday 60 on the bike was a lighter effort than usual thanks to a medical device i had strapped to me for 24 hours. The hangup was that I didn’t want to sweat the sensors off, but nomatter how you slice it, I pedaled for 60 minutes straight.

Life won’t wait.

Beyond all of that, I’ve taken on another creative writing endeavor which detracts a bit from these blog posts in some ways, and in other ways it’ll likely start to permeate these posts a bit, too. I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about it and conjuring ideas and I’m excited to get it to the point where I’ll be able to share it with all of you, even if it takes (a long) time.