Struggles

July 31, 2009

Last night was a difficult evening to motivate myself to workout.

After work, I went to the practice session for the Special Olympics Equestrian team that I coach, which is an over an hour from home. It was one of those hectic nights where you're running around trying to get everything together. Three of the other four coaches were not a practice for various reasons; two of which I didn't know wouldn't be making it until just a few hours prior to practice.

When I arrived, the one other coach who could make it had started practice, but everything was running behind and there was a need for some direction. I was juggling getting paperwork from parents and giving instruction to the riders. After some shuffling, I was able to focus my attentions on being in the arena and gave some needed one-on-one attention to riders who hadn't gotten much instruction prior to my showing up.

The evening improved dramatically and it ended up being a very productive and fun practice session. After all riders had dismounted and started heading home, I helped put tack and horses away. One of the girls mentioned that she needed help taking a few of the horses to the "far" pasture. It was decided that the girl who needed the help would be riding one horse and would pony a second with one of our athletes riding bareback for the first time. The last horse would be ridden by another person. The other coach and myself decided to walk behind those on horseback in case any issues were to arrive.

So, we started walking along and kept walking and walking and walking. We had been told the other pasture was "a ways, over the railroad tracks and past a field." After walking about a mile or more, we finally arrived at the next pasture. Then, we got to walk back! I figured that in itself was a good workout!

The next step was to drive all the way home, which is over an hour away. After the fresh air and activity, I was half asleep by the time I got home and wanted nothing more than to fall into bed. Of course, I pushed myself to do the workout and really struggled through it. Then, I sat down and didn't want to get up again. It was hard to motivate myself to get in the shower before bed!

I finally made it into the shower and into bed, but it was one of the toughest nights for exercising so far. It's definitely making me not look forward to doing it again tonight. I'm almost through the second week, though!