Phases...

So I now have been running at lunch time, and I actually enjoy it to the point I look forward to it.  Slowly increasing the time I can run (25 minutes non-stop, woohoo!).

 

But then every time I finally get excited about a sport, committed enough to want to do it past the "I feel like I have to" stage, I now get afraid of it.  As in how long will I keep this up?  Because you see, I tend to go through phases on what I do.  Somehow I can never do everything -- I concentrate in one thing and one thing only...  And it goes through peaks (I do it 5 times a week), then down (I barely do it at all, if ever), and that's that, I find something new to do...  Exercise is a huge stress reliever for me, so I'm always doing something.  I just wish I could do a bit of everything all the time.  But I somehow I never do.

 

When I lived in NJ I used to bike ride everyday after work for at least an hour, and every weekend after coming home from the beach (I'd be a bum during the winter time, but would bike ride until the cold air bothered me too much).  When I first moved to the DC area, I lived in Alexandria and had a bike trail literally right behind my building.  I used to ride it everyday after work and on weekends -- most days going all the way up to Old Town and grabbing the Mt Vernon trail.  A total of a little over 20 miles round trip.  Every day.  I loved it.  I looked forward to it.  I even bought a brand new spanking mountain bike.

 

Then the pool opened and I started hanging out there, the cute lifeguard and the friends I made (who were also lifeguards) helped.  I stopped bike riding, never even trying out my new bike.  I'd attempt to do laps once in a while in the small pool, and it was enough to push my excitement forward, sign up for a gym with a pool and swim everyday after work for at least 1.5 miles, some days 2 miles (not a lot, I know, but not too shabby either).  And I kept it up, bought a few new swim goggles, swim caps in every color, new swimsuits, bought some red zoomers to work out my legs with a kickboard, bought a finger lap counter (it's awesome!), visited tons of forums about swimming...  If I had a date, I'd schedule it after swimming.  Then I found an in at a pool at the Hilton near my job (ah, to have lifeguard friends again) -- and started swimming at lunch time.  I even spent a couple of hundred buying a new MP3 player with a water-proof case, that two years later, I have yet to use it (and now they cost a quarter of what I paid for).

 

A few months went by and I found out about volleyball in DC -- that was right after my ex moved out of the country, so the social aspect of volleyball (meeting new people, talking smack) helped a lot -- swimming was too much silent time to think, volleyball meant I'd forget about it for 2, 3, sometimes 4 hours a day.  So then it became my new obsession.  Then this summer, not even 2 years later after finding volleyball again, the one I thought was here to stay, my interest started dying out.  Other factors contributed -- shoulder throbbed way too many times, we lost one of our volleyball courts which meant too many people playing and having to sit out games, not the same crew as the years before, and not a lot of nice people -- some really bad players and some really good players with really bad attitudes.  So I haven't been out to the sand courts in weeks.

 

Sure, I still play on weekends, when I bike ride my way down to grass courts in the area (yep, finally putting that bike from 3 years ago into good use), and make it to the sand courts occasionally -- but so occasionally that I'm not even considered a "regular" anymore.  Indoor season is starting again, so I have played a few times and I'm making my way into 3 leagues as of now.  But the love for the sand courts and for playing daily for hours on end died out.

 

Just in time for me to start running.  I still suck as a runner -- I never ran before in my life.  It's not like bike riding which I've been doing since I was little.  Or swimming, which I learned when I was 2.  Or volleyball, which I played in junior high & high school.  But it's a new thing for now.  I have a Nike + hooked up to my nano, a couple of running shoes, a few -- very supportive -- sport bras.  Way too many new rock songs downloaded on the ipod.

 

And I'm looking forward to running at lunch today.  And I'm wondering how long it'll last, this eagerness to go out and run.  And wondering why I can't keep up with these things -- after all, I still LOVE swimming and bike riding, but my bike only hits the road once a week, I haven't been swimming in over a month.  And why is it that I go through phases...  And why can't I just be like normal people, scheduling different exercises into their week...