I bombed a bike test a few weeks ago – and I blamed it on Luma.
OK… she wasn’t the entire reason. I’d been all over the board that day – a bazillion meetings at work, a quick Instagram-email-news check in between, writing to-do lists, thinking about those to-do lists and when I was gonna do everything on them, probably listening to a podcast on the way home. In other words: my brain was on information overload.
So when Luma came down to greet me 20 seconds in my five-minute bike test (she likes to put her front paws on my aero bars), it was the last straw. It completely threw me. And in a test that short, there’s no room for distraction. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t hold a steady power output. As the minutes ticked by, my power slowly fell, for a measly 1w increase over my January test.
Ugh.
I’ve had a hard time focusing lately. My brain feels like my Chrome browser – too many tabs open. And I’m bouncing between each one, all while repeatedly telling myself to close them all, pull it together and focus. (In case you’re wondering, the solution for actually having too many tabs open in Chrome is OneTab. You’re welcome.)
But then, the day after my bike test, a day when I was especially all over the place, this gentle reminder from my yoga teacher – right when I needed it:
“Focus on a single point. Find your drishti.”
It instantly snapped me to attention – helpful as I stood there in dancer’s pose. Since then, though, it’s also made me more mindful of where my attention’s going throughout the day. Am I mindlessly scrolling through Instagram, double tapping, when I have a free moment? What about email? How am I reacting to a situation? And this zinger, from that same yoga teacher: How am I being when I am doing?
And while I can’t say I’m perfect and am always present in my moments rather than someone else’s perfectly curated insta moments, I can say it’s made me more aware – a great starting point. Because we all have to start somewhere, even if it’s just a few minutes at a time.
And my next bike test (the 20-minute one)? With Girl Talk blasting in my ears, completely focused: nailed it.
What about you? How focused are you? What are you doing in your spare moments? How are you being when you are doing?
3 Comments
Great post! I have to work on being present every single day. My mind can go off in a hundred directions and when I’m over-loaded, that is when things go wrong. I’m rude to someone, short with the kids, or am an impatient driver…and then I feel even worse. When I feel that over-load building, I’m trying to make myself slow down, breathe, and do a meditation on my phone app. I also just started to schedule my priorities as opposed to picking the priorities out of my schedule…if that makes any sense at all 🙂
LOVE that approach, Amy – makes perfect sense. Being present is so challenging, right?! I’m constantly working on it, too – and am more aware of just how much I reach for my phone (because I find my phone is what makes me more anxious, impatient, crabby). That’s the first step: being aware and mindful. And once you are, it makes such a big difference!
[…] for training this month, a couple blips – including bombing a bike test and taking a week completely off from running. My left ankle started bugging me during a long-ish […]