Tradesies

Remember when you were a kid and you made deals with your friends to trade your STUFF with each other.  I would trade my pack of gum for a Barbie doll dress, or my eye of the tiger marble for a bouncy ball.  Sometimes the trade would go in my favour and most times not so much.  I would come home all proud of what I traded for, and my parents weren’t as happy and would make me go back and trade back for my originally traded item.  My friend’s parents were on the same wave length as mine.  Eventually I stopped trading because I always got my stuff back.

Well this journey is becoming a bit of an internal trade off for me. I can trade off the junk that I love to eat for exercise.  Instead of eating all the time for mindless, emotional reasons, I trade off to train for triathlons.  Really, I am trading one addiction for another.  But the trade-off is a healthier option. 

My friend Nicole once said me that once you start doing triathlons, will not want to do anything else.  She is 100% correct.  The results and the exercise high you get from finishing far outweigh any of the setbacks I may have during the race. It has been three days since I finished my first ever Super Sprint Tri and I did say I wouldn’t do the one in Ottawa because it was in Mooney’s Bay, and well it has been closed for E.coli.  It was one thing holding me back, that and the memory of last year’s fight with the weeds in the water.

So this morning on the ride in with Marc, we talked about me doing the Super Sprint on the long weekend, the grossness of the water and he said – “well you did it last year and survived”.  I don’t think he realized he sealed the deal for me right there.  This means I need to train for the next two weeks.  I can’t miss my open water swim this Saturday morning. I have to get out and run and of course the dreaded bike ride. The good thing is that this bike ride is 15K and is a closed road.  I can live with that.  There is a new running route this year, so I may get out and try the route beforehand.

Sorry I get sidetracked.  So what I have done is traded my eating mindlessly for getting out there and training for better race results.  This will keep me motivated for my 9 run run 1/2 in October, and I will pick something to run in December and then Winterman in February and then something else for the Spring.

Overall I think the tradesies of my food addiction for endless training will pay off for me.  I have realized that reaching my goal is much easier going balls out than it would be to do the minimum and hope for the best.

This is one trade-off I know I can stick with.  I am pretty sure I don’t have any family members or friends who would want to tell me to go back and trade my unhealthy eating habits back.