Motivating the wimp in me...

I pedalled here to work this morning after a day at home yesterday due to the conditions. That's the only positive thing I can say about it. It was, according to our temp guage in the garage -6 that's in the bloody garage, so f*** knows what the outside air temperature is, add on to that wind chill and you can get some idea of just how cold it was on the way in.

The road conditions were crap, the roads until I hit the main Bristol Road were not gritted and covered in snow, and the cycle lane on the Bristol Road was invisible under the stuff, so I was pedalling in the car lane. Luckily at the time I pedal in the traffic is minimal.

All of this pails into insignificance compared to the battle I had with myself from about 0355hrs about actually pedalling at all. I woke up at that time for whatever reason and just lay there thinking of all the reasons why I couldn't pedal in and wouldn't it be better to just phone in and work from home again and stay in bed? For an hour and a half I had an argument with myself but eventually I beat the wimp inside me and bit the bullet and did it. Purely down to the conditions I can honestly say this was the first pedal in that I haven't enjoyed.

I consider myself lucky, my personality type is pretty laid back, my worst mood could be described as mildy irritated. Usually I'm pootling along 90% of the time in a contented state taking absolutely no notice of anything. Thinking about it that's probably why I'm fat in all fairness. But I'm digressing, the point I'm trying to make (badly) is that this pedalling thing is a trial and it would be massively easy to jack.

I'm saying all of this as one of our comrades, James of "the 22 stone cyclist" fame is having a bit of a crisis at the moment, I commented at length on his Blog yesterday about how the things I've done in the past has equipped me to be self reliant if I wanted to achieve anything difficult, and added to my personality type I feel I have the tools to be successful at this. That sounds hugely pompous I know, but it's not meant to be. I'm trying to say that folks who are on this path without the benefit of past experience at digging in, toughing it out and ignoring your demons are to be applauded and are doing a far more admirable job than me.

As I said to James yesterday on his Blog, at the end of the day the only battle you have is with your own morale, not the conditions, not a crap bike, not a temporary bout of ill health and certainly not circumstances around you that seem to conspire against you. It's all down to your own mind and nothing else.

And that Dear Reader was why I got up this morning at 0530hrs and pedalled in after 90 minutes in bed of arguing with the wimp in me about why I shouldn't.

Thanks James. :-)