It has now been a full couple of weeks since I have ridden my bike outside. I have been convalescing as my lower back regains its strength. Progress is steady and in fact, I am contemplating riding outside tomorrow. I am cautiously optimistic.
But the gist of this blog is to identify two unforeseen consequences of being grounded for a couple of weeks. I knew that I would feel a bit depressed, and I knew that I would miss the bike terribly. But who knew that I would become a fat apathetic slob.
Everyone knows that exercise gets the blood flowing and with the surge of endorphins that comes along with it, the person experiences a high for the rest of the day. Since I have been denied my commute, I have suffered a terrible withdrawal from these good natural drugs. I am surprised that my hands are not shaking and that I not in a detox centre, strapped to a bed as I suffer through the cold sweats.
Instead, I am sitting comfortably on the couch downstairs at 8 p.m., ready to watch TV for the night, and I am confronted with an absolute feast. Ordinarily, I restrict myself to a peanut butter and honey sandwich and one (and only one) Lindor chocolate. But since I have been in a bit of depression, and my wife is well aware of this, these restrictions have been eradicated and my plate overfloweth. In addition to the above items, my nighttime diet has included a couple fistfuls of popcorn, a mandarin orange, and if I have been a good boy, then I get an ice cream sandwich.
This usually puts me at risk of my GERD acting up, the acid bursting through my sphincter (I love using that word!) and erupting into my esophagus and wreaking havoc, but this has not happened. And so I have seen this as a green light and I am now eating twice as much food as I usually do at night, on a regular basis. It really does make me feel better while eating it – so I guess I am a depressed eater – but as we all know, when this excess continues for too long, then the body begins to be affected.
I can feel my waistline expanding from the gluttony, and this is starting to make me feel worse. I have biked all year long, exercising intensely for much of it, and I have earned a lean athletic body. It just does not seem fair that a couple of weeks of respite (no matter how misdirected) could nullify all of the positive effects of sustained biking. My pants are a little tighter, I can feel a bit of a bulge when I lean over on the stationary bike, and my mood is becoming more depressed. This is just not fair!!!
But in addition to this, I have been really, really tired in the evenings. Despite not riding to and from school, and despite having a student teacher doing half of my classes, I come home at the end of the day like I had just completed a marathon. After supper and some recreation on the iPad, I turn into a zombie and I am in desperate need of a nap. And after the nap is done, I wake up exhausted and it takes me like 15 minutes to recover and be able to rise from my Ikea chair.
But the thing is, I don’t really recover from the nap. The tiredness is so deepset that I am completely unable to do any tasks afterward. I usually write my blog in the early evening, fresh from my nap, but lately I have absolutely no energy to do it. Last night, I turned on my computer at 7 p.m. and then I spent 10 full minutes simply staring at the screen, doing absolutely nothing. I didn’t even have the energy to click on WordPress. It has gotten so bad that I have resorted to writing my blogs at my place of work. I am not kidding. I am in fact writing this blog at school right now, during one of my spares.
I am stricken by sloth and I don’t even recognize myself as a result. I typically identify myself as a hard worker and usually tireless. I have been compared to a greyhound dog, fast and with great endurance, but lately, this dog is suffering from arthritis and is sleeping all day in its dog bed! It turns out that part of the reason for my eternal energy is because I bike and exercise regularly. But when those are taken away, I become apathetic and listless and I begin to despise myself.
I really need to get back on that bike. I need to be cleansed from these two deadly sins of gluttony and sloth, and this will only happen by being bathed in the sweat that comes from extended cycling.
Phil Goldthorpe: Views from the Passenger Seat 