back to it

well, ok, i'm back.

sort of.

it's been several weeks, with no stressful physical activity other than hiking city streets in Northern Europe. not tough, i know. pretty easy, in fact. perhaps a little too easy, considering the challenge of resuming a workout schedule in the past week or so.

i definitely needed the break. just the way i think everyone needs a break. physically and mentally. to change things up and ease off on the stress and decompress and unwind and thereby (and most importantly) heal. it's always interesting to wake up one day and walk around and suddenly realize that you actually feel pretty good--and that life feels the same way, too.

for once.

having said that, there's always the post-vacation daze of coming back to reality, which invariably is a sobering experience.

all i can say is: it's amazing just how fast your conditioning can leave you with a few weeks of inactivity. it's almost like your body recognizes that it's not getting anything hard, and lowers itself to match the level of difficulty. especially at the critical 2-week mark, which most sports medicine sources i've seen cite as the point at which your fitness levels start to drop dramatically.

from a biological perspective, i guess it makes sense. your body as a biological entity will always try to achieve an equilibrium state by adjusting itself to match the surrounding environment. it seems to be a biological corollary to basic laws of chemistry and physics.

which is fine, and wouldn't bother me, except that changing the equilibrium is always such an unmitigated pain in the ass.

like it is right now.

but i guess this goes with taking a vacation, and goes with being an athlete--even a bad one like me. the best i can do is to just stop whining, accept the situation, and get my butt into gear to change it...by changing my environment to push my body back into the equilibrium state i'm used to and really would much rather prefer--and that is an equilibrium state different from where i've been for the last few weeks.

back to it.