My Mind's the Limit

Today I did my first double workout. I worked out with Sean in the morning at Fitness Together and took a spinning class after work at the Y. When I started spinning, my legs were really tired, so I thought I'd take it easy, since I had already done one work out today. But then I thought, is that why I'm training--to take it easy? I'm doing this to challenge myself to see how much I can improve my fitness level in two months. That has nothing to do with taking it easy.

I don't want to push myself so hard that I can sick or injured, but neither of those things is likely to happen in spinning class. So I decided I would try to keep pace with the instructor. Immediately, I felt a burst of energy and started having fun. Peggy, the instructor, leads an amazing spinning class. She loves to alternate standing and sitting--sit for a minute, stand for 2; sit for 8 seconds, stand for 8 (repeat many times); sit for 4 seconds, stand for 4 (repeat many times); sit for 2 seconds, stand for 2 (repeat a bazillion times). Great workout for the heart and quads.

As much as I know that my frame of mind influences my performance, I don't have a lot of mastery over shifting from a "I can't do it" to a "I'm going for it" state of mind. I really saw that when I was doing my baseline assessment at the start of my training program. Like when I was doing a plank, the goal was to hold the plank position for as long as I could. If you've never done a plank, this is exactly how I look doing it. Anyway, I decided before I even started that I was going for holding it for 2 minutes. So as soon as Brandon told me I hit 2 minutes, guess what--I collapsed. If I had decided I was going for 3 minutes, would I have made it? 5 minutes? I don't know what my limit actually is, but I'm sure I didn't really hit it.

There's a great Radio Lab podcast called limits (go to http://www.radiolab.org/series/podcasts/ and scroll down the list of podcasts in the main part of the site until you see "Limits." It starts with an amazing story of a woman who competed in the Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii without training for it. The Ironman is a 2.5 mile swim, followed by a 112 mile bike ride, followed by a 26.2 mile run. And this woman was competing without training. The whole program is such a reminder that we're capable of much more than we think. So I'm not about taking it easy--I'm about going for it!!!