Still not ready to rock.

It's January 10th. I'm tired.

On the bright side, I had a Project Marathon epiphany at the gym on Monday. Of course, it was the first full work week of the year, and the gym was ridiculously full of revolutioners (or whatever you want to call them). Entering the underground parking garage, I definitely noticed more cars. Upon walking in, the gym was much busier than usual: lots of people, less locker room space, more membership representatives giving tours, and definitely no chance of getting into a spin class 10 minutes prior to start. Oh well.

My club tends to keep memberships low enough so people don't have to wait in line, a la 24 Hour Fitness - that place was a nightmare at 5pm. This is the first gym I've attended where the treadmill doesn't have some kind of a sticker warning like, "Keep use to 30 minutes while others are waiting." Plenty of equipment. No one waiting. I can run on the mill for hours if I elect to. This is why I pay the big bucks, folks.

Arriving into the locker room, I catch a glance at a woman letting out an enormous sigh while unzipping her pink gym bag and extracting the contents on to the bench. I smiled at her slightly, knowing exactly what her sigh was about. "Back to it after the holidays. Ugh. I've been home in Ireland for weeks just eating and drinking like mad," she remarked.

"I know what you mean." I said.

I realized I was actually lying to this nice woman - at least about this year. This was probably overall the healthiest, albeit most physically and motivationally challenging winter of my life. In fact, while other people are gearing up and killing themselves at the gym this week - it's my taper week. Which means, I'm actually supposed to be doing less.

So, I recanted. "I should say, I did things a little differently this year. I trained for a marathon that's in two weeks. So, this is actually an easy workout day for me."

She kind of looked at me in disgust at first, but then smiled and said, "Wow! Good for you!" That made me feel pretty good. I later saw her out on the fitness floor working with a trainer while I ran an easy 2-miler on the treadmill and headed out to my car in the now overly crowded parking garage. During the 10 minutes I was stuck in the garage, I thought to myself:

This has been a good winter. Yes, I don't enjoy running 20 miles. I am in a slight bit of pain in a few joints and I am not confident about running a marathon in 2 weeks. But, I am not starting over from scratch. I've done that before, and it totally sucks. This is the first year I'm starting out on the right foot. The right, blistered, sore foot that cramps after mile 17.

Life is good. I can rock this spring.