Thursday, March 05, 2009

So What's Your Excuse?

I haven't yet finished my own muddled ramblings, that I started in It's the Fitness Stupid, about why my lack of fitness is the key to my mediocre sailing performance (and on what I'm going to do about it), but some of the comments on that post made me chuckle. It seems that I struck a chord and that some of my readers are also struggling with how to motivate themselves to exercise more. We all have different reasons or excuses for why this is harder than we would like, but these two are some of the best I have heard so far...

  • I once bought a couple of books about fitness but they are somewhere in the garage. Smilicus.

  • The burglar stole my TV and the remote for my VCR. Carol Anne.

So what's your excuse for not working out, or for getting as fit as you want to be? Please leave your answers in the comments to this post or if you have your own blog, and feel so inspired, write a post on your blog about it. There will be a prize for the most creative excuse: I will write a post here, just for you, on any subject you chose.

Go for it. What's your excuse?

8 comments:

B.J. Porter said...

Worst excuse of all...I just don't like to do it.

Which means ANYTHING can become an excuse.

O Docker said...

The boat ate my bicycle.

Well, not really, but it just as well might have.

Once upon a time, I was a lean, serene, biking machine. Pounding it out every day on the mean street of the American River Bike Trail. Back and forth the 18 miles to work. 36 every day. 180 every week. A nice pad of miles, the bike geeks would say. Hi, I'm O Docker and I'm a bikee, spandex and all.

You think any two boats sailing are a race? You don't know the bike trail. The skies over wartime Bremerhaven didn't know the dogfights the bike trail sees every day. You learn to dive out of the sun, draft in the other guy's six, read when he's low on fuel, judge when you can outclimb him. You get tough. You get crafty. You get strong.

And that trains you well for the real battles - the club rides staged every weekend in the steamy, tortuous foothills of the Sierra Nevada east of Sacramento. Simple, innocent, we're-all-out-here-just-for-the-sunshine-and-fresh-air no competition fun rides. Yeah, right.

But that was before the boat, and the weekends it started consuming. Every weekend. If I want to sail next weekend, I'll need to fix the frommet on the engine THIS weekend. And if I drive into work on Tuesday, I can make it to Worst Marine after work to pick up the gaskets I'll need for that. But that store doesn't have them, so I'll drive in on Wednesday, too, so I can go to the other store that does. And I'll have to go to Home Despot on Thursday to get the left-handed articulated wrench I'll need to do the install.

You get the picture. A long, ugly downhill slide. It's not that I'm pathetic and weak, with no focus or commitment.

It's all the boat's fault.

The O'Sheas said...

I wonder how many of us are former cyclists. I was very similar to O'D, even to the point of riding an 18-mile commute, one way, each day. Mine was over the Portland West Hills, so I didn't have the competition O'D, did, but I know every one of those people. It's all true, the drafting, the crafty gauging, and then striking.

:)

Unfortunately, I got hit while driving a car by a doctor talking on her mobile phone and running the red light. I was unconscious for 5-10 mins and came to with some fireman standing around. They asked me my name and I thought about it really hard and said, "I should know that..."

They asked me where I lived and I said, "I should know that too. Wait. I think I just moved."

To which they responded, "Where'd you move from?"

"I dunno. What's that right there?" pointing to a twenty foot high set of golden arches.

"That's McDonalds."

"I've seen that before..."

"Yeah, there's a lot of'em. You better sit back down."

Then I sat on my couch for about three years.

Anonymous said...

Entropy, man. Entropy.

Carol Anne said...

GandK, I feel your pain. I've been sidelined by a brain injury when I was 10, a car accident when I was 14, and medical malpractice when I was 27 (that left me in too poor health to cope with the stress of a lawsuit, so there wasn't one).

I was still coping with those injuries when I discovered sailing in my mid-30s, and it was sailing that helped me to pull past the obstacles. Getting involved in racing (thanks, Tillerman, for infecting me with that bug) also got me to think more seriously about fitness and start my fitness program.

That program worked very well until, while I was away at a regatta where my results were seriously disappointing, somebody burglarized my house. It wasn't just the loss of the TV and the VCR remote and a huge lot of jewelry of almost no financial value but huge sentimental value. I felt violated and demoralized.

I'm actually working at getting past that now, but it's a long road.

Anonymous said...

18 miles? Dang. I feel proud cause I used to go 6 each way, it took me about 45 minutes. I guess that means 18 miles takes about 2 hours each way.

My excuse is the nordic track doesn't function adequately as a dust magnet if I use it, my jumprope is kinked, and we all know the prep work that goes into doing some push ups or using the chin up bar.

Tim Coleman said...

I used to cycle to work everyday - round trip of 18 miles - good exercise.

Now my office is just down tghe hallway from my bedroom.

And I hate winter

Anonymous said...

i'm working on my love handles, and exercise interferes w my goal for 200 lbs.

Post a Comment