I do not have enough time to …
A common statement. I am not saying it is not true. I do not have enough time to get a degree in every topic available on earth. True. But that is often not how we use it. We use it as an excuse rather than a reality.
Truth is – we all have the same number of minutes in an hour and hours in a day and days in a year. We do not know when ours will abruptly stop, but we can plan for what we know.
I know we all wish we had more time to _____. Your choice. Here I will speak of the bike because … because this is a bike-centric site, and I think we share that element. More time to ride the bike.
I miss the days when I could go ride with no agenda, get lost and come home when I wanted. Now, it is not quite as free. Other commitments and or daylight might limit my time on the bike.
One thing I still struggle with is even more specific – time on a particular ride. We all have a ‘target’ in our mind. Mine sounds like this. Well, I cannot get a good 2-hour ride in, so it is not worth going out to ride. What? Who made up that rule? I did. And it is wrong. Where did it come from? Well, a standard ride when I was racing (in my young and influential days) was 40 miles. So, a basic ride was 2 hours. We rarely did less. So now, my past wants to inform my present. Even when it is not applicable.
For instance. Even though my brain still tells me that, there are times I move past that old paradigm and go out for an hour — or just 45 minutes. Is that ride irrelevant? No. No fitness gains there! Untrue. Not enough time to enjoy it. Another lie.
You have heard it before – whatever you do active means you are literally lapping the you that would be sitting on the couch.
Yes, there are times that a short ride does negatively impact your schedule. More often than not, that short ride is important. Mentally getting on the bike for 45 minutes used to make me feel frustrated because it was only 45 minutes. I am changing my way of thinking so that now I think – wow, that was nice to get out and move the legs. 45 minutes is better than no minutes.
Yes, sometimes it ‘feels’ like the time to get ready will be too long to be worth going on a short ride … thus it will not be worth it. My mind tells me that also. I disagree with my mind when it tries to tell me that. Go do it.
Do you struggle with something similar or am I alone in this?
Yes, exactly. Perfect. Nothing more to add.
Time has been a problem for the last 25 years or so. Not many long rides, but I am able to make up for that with lots of short rides as I use my bike to commute and run errands. I once read that my 5 mile rides were considered “junk” miles as they didn’t add to my fitness all that much. I guess getting what you can and not burning hydrocarbons has been pretty important to me. One man’s junk may be another’s treasure.
For me it’s often been about the temperature (too hot/too cold) and the state of my self on a given day (am I too tired, maybe getting a cold, etc).
Like you, I’ve learned to just override that chatter and go for the ride. I realized after doing a ride that almost didn’t happen due to various misgivings, that I had a great time and felt way better than I did before the ride.
So now, for me, the default answer to the question, “should I go for this ride?” is YES!