Enjoying the Moment

The 2012 triathlon season is now underway and my first race, the Sullivan Sprint, is behind me. This winter I spent a lot of time focusing on my swim and this was reflected in a two minute improvement over my 2010 effort. Funny how excited I got over two minutes.

My next race is the Gateway Olympic at Lake Carlyle, Illinois. But enough about racing. Sometimes in our quest to follow some ordained training schedule, it's easy to stop living in the moment and find pleasure in the simple act of exercise. I find that I get so wrapped up in getting the workout in, that I forget what this is all about, which is the pursuit of a hobby that I enjoy.

And so in the spirit of living in the moment, for the month of May I am going to find some small pleasant fact about each and every workout. And just maybe someday in the future, when training is no longer fun, I will come back here and reread these posts as a reminder.

May 1 - This morning I went for a run. There were quarter mile repeats included in this, which are never easy, nor should they be. Then a couple of miles in Zone 2. I jogged into the heart of Chatham down Route 4 and passed between McDonalds and Hardees. Even though it was just barely 5 a.m., the smells of hash browns wafting from the two fast food eateries was pure pleasure.

This evening I took my old Cannondale out for a spin. We have been having some serious thunderstorms and I had doubts about going very far from home, so I kept it close by following some small country roads that wound through the neighboring cornfields.

Central Illinois may lack hills and thick forests, but there's a certain lonely beauty to the vast farm fields. I had to stop and snap a pic.