Little Miss Crankypants

Good morning! And a sunny one it is, too. I should be all happy and bouncy and ready to go… Unfortunately, the opposite is the case. This week has been a complete washout for workout really.

On Wednesday, my beloved swim day, my manager made me attend a meeting in the morning and I had to miss my swim. I was cranky all day and got sick then in the evening.

Yesterday, I did get my morning strength session in, which has me in pain today. I don’t know what I did differently; it seems to have affected my muscles anyway. But then last night when I was trying to make it across town for my spinning class, I got stuck in traffic. I could see the digits on my car clock move closer and closer to class time but I wasn’t moving anywhere. There was no apparent reason for the traffic jam either. There was fume coming out of my ears.

So I was seriously undertrained this week (by my standards anyway) but I had signed up for a presentation of a motivational speaker at my gym. I had great hopes for this. I wanted it to uplift me and make me soar. So I went to the gym, got settled and waited excitedly for the talk to begin.

So the talk…mmmmh… Let’s just say, it was not bad. He made very good points. He went with us through the A-Z of achieving goals. It all made sense, it was all positive, he was all very positive but… He had this weird thing of having us jump up and down, especially if our response to his 1, 2, 3 HUA (heard, understood, acknowledged) wasn’t loud enough (that was just too interactive for me) and he lacked the magnetism and charisma of a motivational speaker. Maybe it was because he was an Irishman trying to copy an American motivation style, maybe he just doesn’t have that sparkling personality to go with such motivational talks (he does earn good money with this, though), or maybe I have heard and seen too much over the years already, he definitely did not rock my boat.

And as per usual, he picked me of all people to ask me how it was as I was trying to sneak out the door afterwards (why, why, why?). Gaaaaawd, I can’t lie! But I can’t flat out tell him that I did not enjoy his talk, can I? I went for the safe: “Oh, I really need to think about this a little longer. I like to take my time processing things like this.” I think he knew I was lying. I am a bad liar.

This morning I woke up after not enough sleep and I was riddled with my bleepin’ allergy. On top of that, the landlord had decided to turn off the heating and I was freezing my tail off. So today started on a grumpy note. If the allergy does not go away after my dose of antihistamines, swimming this afternoon will be out of the question because getting the reaction from the chlorine on top of the allergy will knock me out for the rest of the weekend. But then, being home early and not working out means that I get to kick back on the couch and watch the Olympic opening ceremony in Sochi. Thankfully, I do get BBC Two over here. I much prefer British sports coverage over Irish sports coverage. I’m not sure that RTE show the opening ceremony, I didn’t even check.

Two weeks of lovely winter sports, which I miss so much in Ireland. These young athletes do inspire and motivate me. Some of my best childhood memories come from watching figure skating, biathlon, ski jumping, bobsleigh, etc. I myself tried my hand at figure skating (ouch, ice hurts!) and cross country skiing (my poor cold feet). Whilst I gave up the figure skating without problems, I do regret not giving the cross-country skiing more of a chance back in the days. It’s a great workout but I was a teenager and downhill (which my mom would not let me do) was just that much cooler. I may actually plan a cross-country holiday somewhere next year. It’s perfect cross training for triathletes and really fun, if you are not a teenager trying to look cool.

And then I am hoping for some good weather tomorrow morning so I can try out my newly adjusted bike. If that all comes together, I’ll take off the crankypants and get back into my happy gear.

Keep on training!