Out of the Darkness Comes Light

It appears that in between Halloween and the election, that another important milestone has slipped through the cracks. Last Sunday was the beginning of the "126 Days of Night" in which people with 8-5 jobs are not allowed to see the sun except on weekends and sometimes lunch breaks. At least there are no vampires (yet).

I think I may start my own techo-pagan religion where instead of celebrating solstices and equinoxes, I celebrate man-made changes of the clock.

The irony is that my year of craziness set in during the dark days of winter 2008 and never seemed to let go of me, even during the sunniest days of the year. Of course, at the time, I thought my inability to pry myself from the bed every morning was because it was cold and dark, not because I dreaded what the day would bring.

After many months of railing against my dissatisfaction with my job and a general cloud of anxiety about various athletic and non-athletic aspects of my future, I'm starting to "go with the flow" a little more. Of course, this has resulted in my giving up my coach and pretty much all formal training, realistically facing my issues at work, and basically admitted that I have no freaking clue what will happen tomorrow or next week or next spring and trying to okay with that.

So as the darkness settles in on the world once again, I'm actually pretty at peace with it. I've been running through my neighborhood in the evenings with a headlamp, which is still kind of scary, but fun. I'm already starting to get less sore and more fast again. I've also remembered how well I sleep during the winter (at least when I don't have crazy Obama/McCain dreams swirling through my head) and that January, February, and March are usually my best training months because of the general lack of other distraction that time of year. I just pushed too hard, too early last winter.

For the time being I'm in what I will dub the "racing off-season", which is a nice little paradox like "active recovery". For all practical purposes, I am having my off-season now, even though I'm still going to a few races. I'm enjoying the running, so I'm going to stick with that on week days until I feel "hungry" enough to get on a trainer. I'm not sure when that will be. I may end up running the Boston Marathon next spring instead of racing the Ouachita Challenge (kidding).

The good news is that I am well covered when the time comes for riding a bike in winter weather. My new knickers and tights arrived yesterday. The website said the 3-5 business days to make and ship the knickers, but they were at my door in 6 regular days. That's darn good turnaround time for semi-custom clothing. Plus, they apparently make fully-custom clothing to your exact measurements for a slight premium. Anyway, I'm pretty happy with both items, at least from the quick try-on yesterday. It looks like the knickers will be field-tested at the Iceman this weekend, as the Traverse City, MI forecast is 41 and raining for Saturday.