Too much
By Alison Colavecchia
1.4.01 (www.slowtwitch.com)

Some days it is all simply too much. The kids, the training, the job, the house…These are the days when even the thought of a long run or favorite swim workout fails to rally me.

I have had a sinus infection for over a week now…the Christmas stuff is scattered about my house and my work is piling up. As I look around my house, all I see are the jobs that have yet to be done: the laundry that I just sorted and put away, magically reappearing in the laundry basket; the basement just cleaned, now strewn with popcorn and toys; and the kitchen (yet to be cleaned) but now additionally cluttered with last night's post dinner dishes. Ugh! These are the days when I think there is no way I will ever make it to Ironday, I can’t even do my dishes!

My body is screaming for a break and some sleep but I find it hard to tell whether it is screaming because it wants to hide or because it wants to rest. My two usual coping strategies at moments like these are to hide or ignore the signs and plough on. Both have unpleasant side effects I'm realizing. If I hide, then when I re-emgerge the laundry is even bigger, the kitchen messier and my work piled higher. This also seems to have an adverse effect on my husband…On the other hand, if I completely ignore my screaming body, I run the risk of doing things at half mast and having to do double the job in the end, or worse, running the risk of getting injured.

So at 5:30 AM I think about my run and will my body to go. No luck, I am a rock. But since I am giving myself permission to do things differently on this pilgrimage of mine, my running partner and I opt for a walk instead of a run. I hear the demon "quit monsters" loud and clear, those workout voices screaming at me that I will never finish my half-Ironman, let alone a full, if I'm not following the plan! I try to scream back in the words of my mother and father- in- law: "go slow, to make fast." I guess I am hoping that as I'm starting my day in the crisp clear snow, in the silence of the early morning, I can go slow now and speed up later. Maybe by sacrificing this morning's run I will save today's swim and weight training.

As I sit at my desk a couple of hours later, I turn to my Everest books that are scattered about my office and home. I love these books and how so often the complexity of mountain climbing is reduced to simplicity. In them, time and again people have described how their will to summit the biggest mountains in the world comes down, in the end, to their ability to exercise patience and put one foot in front of the other. So given my present capacities and list of things to do, I am going to reduce my day to its simplest terms. I am going to move forward simply by putting one foot in front of the other. I am going to try to be patient, confident that at the end of the day the important things will have been taken care of. …I am going to trust my equipment (me) and move …left, right, left, right….

Today on my desk:

To the Summit: A woman's journey into the mountains to find her soul by Margo Chisholm and Ray Bruce

Within Reach :My Everest Story by Mark Pfetzer