It's been a while...

I did no training today. I couldn't, I was in a holding pattern. For most of the day, I couldn't even force myself to train if I wanted to.

I'm like everyone else, there is some days when training is easy and there is other days when it's hard. On the hard day's, I've always been able to conjure up some sort of mental head game that pushes me out the door and once I get started, I'm fine. Today, I didn't have the head game in me, it was a weird circumstance. I didn't want to be very far away from my computer.

Last night, after a long training and emotional day, Alice and I went to Barb and Jamie's place for beer and cigars. It was a beautiful night with lots of laughter, as always. If their new neighbours looked over the fence, it would have been quite a sight. Drinking cocktails, smoking cigars and passing around the blood pressure machine. I'm sure they would have said, "Our neighbours are HARD CORE, what did we get ourselves into?".

Alice, the only diabetic among us, had the best blood pressure out of the group. I'm not sure if that's a "good for you Alice", or it just shows how "bad" the rest of us are. In fact, Alice put us all to shame, she was "100% perfect". I was just impressed that I had a 45 bpm resting heart rate and only needed a little help to put the arm band on properly. When we got home I had a bit of a "buzz on" and wrote my blog post, then fell asleep and woke up in the morning unsure of when I was going to be able to train.

Today, was THE DAY I'm supposed to finalize the paperwork for this VERY LARGE deal I've been working on, potentially the biggest in my career. I needed to put it all together, get the final contract signed by my new boss and email it all back to the customer. I was waiting on different sections to be returned from different people within our organization and I didn't feel comfortable training until I knew it was DONE!!!

Alice and I also had a "lunch play date" with Barb and Jamie, so I didn't have time to do my long run before lunch and without my deal put to bed, I wasn't doing it until after that email was sent, which I thought would be around 5 pm.

The one thing I don't recommend is going for lunch with Jamie and parking your rarely washed 2007 Toyota 4runner beside his 2010 Ferrari. It's very dangerous. There is so many Ferrari gawkers, young and old alike, that I was concerned they were going to bump into my 4runner and rub off the dirt. I hate when my dirt is not consistent or when the kids, or Alice, write "wash me" into it. I've now learnt my lesson, next time I'm parking on the other side of the lot.

Driving to "the play date" was weird. It was the first time Alice and I ever had a non business lunch with another couple during the week. Driving over to the restaurant, I said to myself, "so this is what it must feel like to be retired" and then as we passed by the Lincoln Dealer, I found myself eye-balling one of the new Crown Victoria's and wondered if I'd look good wearing white shoes and a white belt with shorts and knee high socks.

I also learnt that if you pull up in a Ferrari, the chef is prepared to pull out the "special" menu. When the "special menu" was asked for pre-Ferrari sighting, it was unavailable, then post-Ferrari sighting, it magically appeared. I knew Ferrari's had power, but I didn't realize they has that level of persuasive power. I've got to ask Jamie if they give him a "free super-sizing" when he goes through the McDonald's drive thru? If they do, I'm selling the house and the four of us are moving into a Ferrari.

After lunch, I spent most of the day, on my deck, with my computer and working. I was very anxious for three reasons. The first is, the day after drinking I'm naturally always anxious and the only thing that removes my anxiety is training. The second, is I've worked to hard for this deal and wanted to make sure "it was put to bed". And the third, was I need to train, it's the only thing that puts me in a Zen like state, it essentially "strokes my head and tells me everything's going to be alright".

I was working and sipping beers throughout the afternoon and by 5 pm turned up the heat a bit. Before I did that, I made sure my final email to the customer was written, I had all the supporting documents attached and I was just waiting for the signature page. So other than attaching the signature document, I pretty much couldn't screw anything up. I AM responsible with my drinking that way.

Turns out the signature page was scanned and sent to me at 6 pm, but because the file was so big, it didn't get to me until 8:48 pm. In that time, I had lots of beers and at least one whole large Domino's pizza to myself (I knew I should have fought Alice on getting the three large pizza special). I even passed out and had a nap. When I woke up in a pool of sweat, the file arrived, I adjusted the scan to make the file smaller and sent it off to my customer.

It was now 9:30 pm and I had nothing left in me to "push" the start button and get training. I didn't even have it in me to write my blog or get off the sofa. All I could think about was, "forget about it and get back at it tomorrow".

Rest Day

17