10 day Forecast

I seem to be able to fool myself into thinking that there is lots of time until a race. I look at the weeks, days and think to myself 'self, nothing to worry about, you have lots of time'. I think this right up to the point that race date looms on the 10 day weather forecast. Something about seeing what the meteorologists think is going to be happening on that day makes me realize it is quickly approaching. Now, I am not foolish enough to think that I can control the weather, or that looking at the forecast several times a day, or an hour will make a difference, but that doesn't seem to stop me. You see I like to plan, and somehow part of my planning is knowing what the weather might be. Currently the 10 day forecast is showing 60% of dry. Why do they insist on displaying it as 40% chance of rain, are there really that many glass half empty people out there. If I were to write the 8 day forecast (cause it is now only 8 days until I tow a start line at a race I consider to be the real deal. But hey I had to spend 2 days looking and analyzing and looking again, and wondering how often they update the information, oh and freaking out a little bit because the race is only 10 days, then 9 days, now 8 days away) -but I digress, back to my forecast. My 8 day forecast is 'There will be a strong chance of sweat, 100% which will drip into your eyes and fog your glasses, 90% chance of heavy breathing leaning towards wheezing, 50% chance of foul language (what only 50%, well that could go up if there are Thirsty Beavers present!) 25% chance of taking the bike for a walk , 40% chance that someone will make fun of my So Cal riding style ( would be higher but Canadians are generally very polite) but mostly in the 8 day forecast calls for a fun filled day with lots of laughter and 100 chance of getting dirty, and since this blog is called dirty hundy, that is a good thing!

Overload Warning

Yesterday while doing my treadmill run I got a warning on the screen. Overload Warning it read. My first reaction was disbelief, how is it possible that me running at 8mph for 50 mins had caused the treadmill to be overloaded. Then I got to thinking, maybe it wasn't referring to me going too fast, maybe it was like a bridge that had a load limit and I was dangerously close to exceeding it? Whatever it meant, I took the warning seriously and slowed it down. I didn't want to cause a commotion and have smoke coming out of the belt, then everyone would know that I had eaten more than one cupcake at the birthday party the day before!What really puzzled me was how an object that I was on but in no way connected to could get me to listen to the signs of pushing too hard but sometimes when my body flashes the same message across the screen to me, I completely ignore it. I'll cover it up, pretend to not have seen the signs and just keep on pushing. I am not the only one who does this. I realize that high fitness is just one step from the edge of injury and overdoing it. When pushing the bodies limits and intensifying fatigue we are dangerously close to complete system meltdown. From now on when I cut a workout short, or don't go quite as hard as I planned on going, I will be heeding my internal overload warning light and preventing complete system failure.