2nd thoughts

Heading to the Y yesterday evening, the thought crossed my mind that they might have deactivated my YMCA membership. After all nearly six months had passed since my last visit. Quite possibly they could have assumed that I was never coming back.

Surprising the card reader flashed from red to green, and the turnstile clicked to allow me through.

Minutes later, my favorite stair master look just the same as it did back March. May be a little more used but otherwise the same.

Climbing on and pressing start, my legs felt right at home going up and down. Almost as if they had never been way. Not wanting to overdo it, I would limit my workout to 30 minutes.  No sense in injuring my tender legs.

30 minutes passed faster than expected, and I moved on to the weight machines.

Turned into a pretty good workout.

As I left the Y, I reflected back on the fact of not cross training for the last six has had an effect on me, and it has not been a positive one.

In years passed, cross training has always been my mainstay while injured. I would always lower my running mileage but continued to make heavy use of the machines. In some sense, this helped maintain my aerobic ability. With my hamstring injury, I let the cross training slide, reduced my mileage, and crossed my fingers this would speed the healing process.  The thought process being less stress on the hamstring would be better.

There are times when you have to go down a path just to see where it goes and understand how it turns out. Knowing what I know now, I would have stayed with the cross training. I believe I would have better off.

Is this the ugly part of any decision that we make. Do we chose option A or option B? Only once we are down the path do we truly comprehend the ramifications of our decisions.

 

Thought from the Stair Master,

The Cool Down Runner