Underdoing It

Jack, the Boy and I went skiing Sunday with another family. The mom is recovering from an injury, as I am. Katrina and I spent all day on the green slopes where we learned to ski again while the boys went to the terrain park and practiced jumping. The husbands/dads skied black runs.

It was a good day. Katrina skis slower than me, if that is humanly possible. This was fine with me. I was glad not to be holding anyone back.

The best part of skiing again went unnoticed until Sunday: I was wearing ski boots, ski pants and a helmet in the lodge. In the handful of times I drove the Boy to ski, I sat in the lodge in my hiking boots and jeans, jealous of the other moms skiing. I don't think they noticed me, but I noticed them. How could I not notice the empty lodge in the morning filling at 11:30 with people coming in for an early lunch, staying packed until 1:30, and then having a slow flow of hot cocoa and coffee drinkers for the rest of the afternoon. 

I was happy to stay on the green runs Sunday mainly because my legs were tired from working out so much last week. I stretched myself on my weight lifting (150 pounds on the leg press) on Thursday, and paid for it on Friday and Saturday with sore and stiff legs. I am used to being flexible, and when I am stiff I feel out of place, not like myself. 

Now that I have started skiing, I am starting to take my workouts more seriously. I have a purpose, a reason to be in shape other than being in shape for its own sake. I feel like I need to workout, to lift weights, to do my home strengthening exercises regularly. Before, I had been doing my exercises, but I was underdoing it. I would stay in the safe zone, not pushing myself too hard fearing I'd get hurt or sore. Ironically, my extra workouts to get me into shape to ski have made me kind sore and weary, which makes me hesitant to ski. It keeps me conservative on the slopes, afraid to try anything too challenging, steep or bumpy. Even though I am skiing conservatively, I feel like I am on track to go on a ski vacation with the family in the future.

I've never been a slacker or an underachiever, or so I thought. I shouldn't be so hard on myself. The workouts right after my surgery were hard and I needed to go slow. It was hard to judge when I was ready to start making things harder for myself, which is why I had a physical therapy team to push me along. I could have stopped going to physical therapy months ago, but I wanted to learn to run. I needed to push myself to do that. I wanted to become more agile, so they added agility exercises for me. I wanted to ski, so they tested my strength.

I had been underdoing my workouts for the past few months. Even though I was lifting weights and gaining strength, I wasn't lifting as much as I could. It took me skiing a few times to recognize that I could push myself harder than I had been. It wasn't that I was slacking as much as reaching a plateau. I needed a nudge, a push down the mountain, to get me to advance.