Everybody Needs a Nap (or at least, I do)

I had a nice post all prepared yesterday, some profound musings about the mental aspects of athletics. Unfortunately it was only prepared in my head as I was driving, and I fear that the post leaked out my ears at some point and is now languishing in a ditch somewhere north of Blaine and south of Isanti. Which really tells you all you need to know about the current mental aspect of my athletics.

Sadly, the physical aspect of my skating is matching the mental at this point--kind of scattered, not too reliable, not a lot of "snap." Yesterday there was a glimmer of progress; my 4x6k workout (60 laps, for those of you who don't hang out at 400 meter ovals) did segue into a 2x6k, 2x4k workout (a decrease, I must add, that was approved ahead of time via phone by coach TieGuy--I prefer to have permission before I wuss out), but it went fairly well. I was actually thinking, after the workout yesterday, that I might do part of today's "tempos" (race-pace laps) in my morning workout and part at the evening inline races tonight--races which I used to compete in regularly but which this year, because of extensive suckage, I have thus far only spectated and volunteered at.

Then I got on the oval this morning.

Granted, I only had 4 hours of sleep last night (in retrospect, the night before I had to get up at 5am to go to an ice arena to try out my new long track boots and then go right to the oval to skate probably wasn't the best night to go watch Hubster's weekly broomball game and then hang out in the parking lot afterwards until 12:30). Granted, I skated 50 laps hard yesterday. And granted, I'm old and somewhat chunky. Still, this morning's tempos (1000 and 1500 meters) were truly, horrifyingly slow. So slow--and yet, paradoxically, so painful; something that slow shouldn't hurt that much--that I couldn't bring myself to do the final tempo, a 2k, and it's highly unlikely that I'll do it at the races tonight, either. So now I'm tired, disappointed, cranky, and slightly sunburned (who knew you need suncreen at 8 am?). And I have a horrible earworm of the song "Everybody Needs a Nap"--from a Barney video.

So I think I'll take a nap.