Slowing It Down

I had a hard time concentrating yesterday, especially when it came time to write for the blog. Part of it was that I didn’t write first thing in the morning. However, I’ve felt that before and this time it was that plus something else. I woke up with a scratchy and dry throat and super dry sinuses. Thinking that would smooth itself out during the day, I didn’t pay much attention to it as a reason for my diffculty concentrating.

Moving through the day, I just kept pushing through mild discomfort, mostly in my sinuses, which kept me a bit out of whack through most of the day. It was a day off from my cycling training program which I was happy about, because I was pretty low on energy. I chalked that up to two days of riding outside, in colder weather than I had expected, for 2+ hours each time.

By last night I was pretty zonked out, managed to save just enough energy to take the dog out to do what she needs to do before bed, came back and fell into bed. I let myself sleep in later than usual today, which helped, however still woke up feeling less than 100%.

Ok, now I get it, I must be sick, someway, somehow. I didn’t get diagnosed, just let myself roll with the fact that I was. It surprised me how difficult it was for me to allow myself to feel being sick. The last time I can remember letting myself feel being sick was probably during college, when I used to come back for Thanksgiving break and collapse on the couch for 2-3 straight days, while my body recovered from running way too hard for too long.

This time, though, rather than the complete collapse, I decided to just roll with it and let myself not feel 150% or even 100%, like I sometimes push myself to feel. I let myself feel 85-90% instead. Once I allowed this, the second part of the puzzle was to allow myself to slow it down a step, which I did around late afternoon, when it became pretty apparent to me that I wasn’t going to win out on this one by forcing myself through it.

Much to my surprise, this worked pretty well. The world didn’t come to a stop and I was still able to make it through the workday as productively as when I think I’m feeling 150% or 100%. I was able to conserve enough energy to do a pretty good job on today’s cycling training plan workout. I didn’t lose as much momentum as I thought I would by slowing it down just a little bit.

I was happy to experience this, as it started me thinking that the level of productivity I push myself to on a daily basis might be able to still be achieved with just a little less effort, making things just a little bit easier, not to mention sustainable. That sounds pretty great to me.