Time and Potential

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.
--Henry David Thoreau

*****

Towards the end of the last year, I spent some time reviewing my training. 2017 was a rough year, for sure. I logged significantly less miles on the road. I did some impressive stuff, but looking back on it now I can tell how bad the depression I was in was. I hardly ran at all in January or February, things didn't really pick up until races in March. I didn't feel fully "back" until May.

I want to avoid that this year. I haven't run since New Year's Day. Mostly the reason for that is that it's been very cold, and we got an impressive fifteen (15) inches of snow yesterday. So, much of my time was dedicated to shoveling out, and making sure we were prepared if we lost power. I actually thought about going for a run in the storm, but I thought better of it.

Running in this kind of snow means the sidewalks that allow me to run on the heavier trafficked roads will be covered. People never shovel or plow them, or at the very least, not consistently. So until the snow freezes solid I'll be away from my typical running routes, and doomed to run laps around my little neighborhood. Having the polar temps, too, isn't fun. I mean it's fun, but having to carry all the extra gear is a bummer at times.

I am starting to go stir crazy, though. I have run in conditions this cold, when we were up in Vermont. I know I can get out and cover a mile or two, and that probably it wouldn't be a terrible thing for me to do that. Went out for a mile and a half today, and it wasn't terrible, but I just felt like I was working so hard.

I'm starting to look at each day as a potential run on the training calendar -- 365 days in a year, and what will I do with them? It's a sad thing to hit the end of the week and see a bunch of zeros in the distance column. Hopefully knowing that will get me out the door more.

I'd like to think that I'll run every opportunity I'll get. I am very hungry for the miles and the movement. My marathon training starts January 23rd, so there's that. I've got a couple digital challenges on Strava to keep me entertained in the meantime. I've restarted the running journal I used to keep offline, too, so that will take the place of the spreadsheet I used during the streak. Hopefully that muscle memory will keep me going.

Started introducing the toddler to point-and-click adventure games today. Growing up I used to play these games with a close friend, and had some really fun times. I'm hopeful that we'll be able to share these as my own kids grow up. She was pretty interested in the game, but it was post lunch so conked out on my lap after a couple of scenes. Still pretty cool to be able to share something that I loved as a kid with my own kid.

Cold few days. We actually got snowed in during the epic "Bomb Cyclone" and ended up having two days out of work. The first couple of days we spent upstairs reading, watching movies. The second two days I cleaned up the basement so we could use the projector to do some movies. We had a lot of fun, and the change of venue was nice. I also put together a play kitchen a family member had gotten for the kiddo, so she had fun playing with that.

Haven't been hitting my steps because of being house-bound but I'm sure I'll rebound next week when the weather is supposed to be in the mid-30's.