This week's running session contemplations.

One thing that I've realized is that completely dedicating yourself to a single goal can be extremely challenging. Life continually throws choices at you that don't support your goals, but may seem like a toss-up in deciding what to do.

I have mentioned a couple times when running with the group that I am always amazed at parents that can manage taking care of their children, being productive at work and train at a high level. It makes my decisions seem so minor in scale, but non-the-less intrusive on my desire to be a decent (slightly above average) endurance athlete.

Two examples from this week:

1. NCAA Tournament Pool. I made the choice to not participate in a pool because I didn't want have more desire to watch the games than I already possess. There is one level of excitement about the tournament that exists because I love college athletics. But the level of anxiety and excitement increases 10 fold if money is involved (no matter how much that may be). I guess that is why gambling on the NCAA tournament is such an enormous "business", it gives excitement to a lot of people's lives.

I still watched a couple games I didn't need to watch, even though I wasn't participating in the pool. Add to this my anticipation of this weeks American Idol and I will likely get a-big-fat F regarding t.v. time this week. T.V. time always seems to impact amount of sleep.

2. Social Requirements. These are the choices I find the most difficult to make. This weekend Tyson had a get-together for his birthday. The gathering was on Saturday night, which means I was tired from running in the morning and training clients during the day. Not only was it on Saturday but it started at 10:00pm and was at a bar downtown. Therefore, I didn't get to bed until 12:30am and ended up drinking two beers (what else would I drink at the bar).

I don't want to say that I didn't enjoy myself, because I did. It seems that these "outings" are attended less and less. But it created a pretty big hole to dig myself out of on Sunday. I didn't recover well from Saturday's run and woke up tired and sluggish, plus I had a terrible headache all day from the 2 beers I had. (I could have had water at the bar, but who wants to be that guy?)

My training plan had an 1:40 scheduled for Sunday's run. I got in 1:37. But to say that the run was a good run would be a lie. I was a little more sluggish than I should have been and I never felt like I got into a rhythm. Recovery today is a must.

Choices are such a funny part of life. Even the little ones we make can influence our paths. I wonder how much time I spend making these decisions? My guess is not very much. I just ended up getting caught in the middle of another basketball game and when Nikki woke me up and said we had to go downtown, I rolled over, put on my sweater and went downtown. Not much thought at all.