See, I have this spreadsheet. On it, there are rows and columns with numbers in them. There are words here and there too, to describe the numbers, and to make it a little prettier… easier to digest. Mainly, the words are there b/c I had a little extra time and wanted to put them there, but for the most part, they’re pretty useless.
It’s the numbers that tell the real story. It’s a story of disappointment, aching joints, fevers, physical and mental fatigue, and missed goals.
According to my spreadsheet, February sucked.
What the spreadsheet says about February is this:
I had a goal of 382.51 miles minimum to ride. I rode 113.55.
There were 20 working days in February. I drove 10, VPN’d 2, was sick for 2, and rode 6.
I had a goal of 324 training miles to ride. I rode 0.
My mileage goal to date is 860.66. I have 598.36, a difference of 262.30.
Those numbers are pathetic. Sad, even. I have a lot of miles to recover, and a lot of rungs to climb in the bikejournal.com rankings.
Still, in spite of that, overall, life wasn’t too bad. I credit my GF for a lot of that. Sure, I was sick for three weeks, and out of town on business for one of those weeks. I had a cough that prevented me from laughing, lest I fall into a spasm of rib wrenching hacking. I had a head so full of cold and flu ick that I lost my sense of taste and smell. For hours, I ran the highest fever of my adult life. We won’t even go into the chaos my gut became when I started taking antibiotics. I simply didn’t have any energy to spare; showering was about all I could muster. In spite of all that, the GF kept me mentally up when I was physically down, and did so with a contagious optimistic attitude that was neither disgustingly sweet nor false. She knew when to push me, and knew when to let me sleep. She didn’t ask for anything, and gave all she had. She didn’t let me get too frustrated by either my health, or the consistently horrible weather by gently reminding me that there’s plenty of time to make up lost miles.
The spreadsheet says February sucks, everything else says “Eh. So what? It wasn’t that bad.” I have time, and the weather is looking up.