Saturday, December 31, 2011

Redefining Rest

It is interesting to look back, especially as the new year approaches.  
The past three days, the weather up here in Bend, Oregon has been nasty.  And after a solid week of training it seemed like a good time for a rest day.  But instead, for some reason each day we resisted the temptation, and ventured into the outdoors to train.  We almost made it through Wednesday, but ended up at the gym for an 90 minute lifting session as a "warm-up" for an evening yoga class.  Thursday was bitter cold, with unseasonal downpours, and high winds.  Certainly we would have been justified in hunkering down next to the fire with a good book, but someone got the idea that the conditions were just about as close to what we'd experience in the upcoming Patagonian Expedition Race, and the idea stuck.  A cold, wet (but somehow still fun) 3 hour training ride on our Ellsworth mountain bikes ensued - complete with fartlek pushup sprints at the end.


Friday, however we were all determined NOT to train.  Our bodies had certainly been sending "rest" messages for days, and finally we listened.  But by mid afternoon we were going pretty stir crazy, with random guttural screams and spontaneous wrestling matches erupting around the house.  The rest day seemed to stretch on forever.  


Is I tried in vain to go to sleep, I wondered if why I(we) were like this.  If it had always been this way.  I certainly feel lazy much of the time, and enjoy sitting around with my morning coffee till it is late in the day. But something seems to always push me out of that place of physical contentment before too long.


An hour later, still unable to sleep, I was sorting through old computer files, and stories I'd written.  I came across a movie I'd made over two years ago...and it seemed all to familiar...
(the text below the movie is what I wrote that day....)





The day after we finished our monster AcroYoga teaching weekend, we were in desperate need of a rest. And we tried, but YogaSlacker Dan had flown all the way from Minnesota to Arizona for the Acro workshop, and we couldn't let him go back to the cold north bitterness without showing him exactly what sort of things he'd be missing....so we kept the climbing to 5.10 and 5.11, and since Chelsey was teaching yoga classes all day - there were just three of us so we all got a bit of rest while the others climbed. The routes were all long (35m) and really really disgustingly sustained. As someone in the video says - "we are gonna need another rest day after this rest day..."




May you all have at least some relaxing moments on this last day of the year....


Jason

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