Monogamy is overrated

An old love has come back into my life and, frankly, it's got me re-thinking my whole approach. It's volleyball. It's bad volleyball and I have to run the games while I play the one night we get together at my local Y (which means I kind of have to hold back that killer instinct), but it's still volleyball - the great sport love of my life that came along after my great love for tennis but before my great love for rowing. Basically, I'm a serial monogamist.

Okay, I've lectured and been lectured to about the value of adding other activities to the mix but have I listened? Um...sort of. I always lift weights no matter what sport I'm playing, so that is technically cross-training but in spirit only, because I can go years - years! - alternating between weightlifting and the one sport I am in love with at the time. And this last year, because life intruded, I've been limited pretty much to fitness classes. Actually the same class, three times a week, the same three days of the week. It's too repetitive and I think my body has finally rebelled (as in I now have bursitis and a couple other chronic aches and pains).

I've wanted to add another activity for the last couple of years but yoga (the only other thing I can find regularly) just doesn't hold my attention for long. And I did, in fact, dabble with cycling briefly and then had a technical glitch (about which see my entry on 9/27), but other opportunities have been limited in my area until now. Anyway - and to the point of the title above - doing something else with my body in addition to the same old-same old feels good. It seems to have the lasting effect of actually make me feel, well, bouncier. So here's my new plan: committed polygamy (aka cross training!).

Sometimes you've got to change the rules

Well, I have completely changed the rules by which I will be playing at life...for now anyway: I've quit my coaching job at school. It really was time. Regardless of whether or not I had given it my best effort (and I did), the fact, is my heart was no longer in it. And, for me at least, if you cannot coach (or compete) with heart, you shouldn't be doing it. Come to think of it, that probably applies to pretty much everything in life. I'm not ruling out doing some freelance coaching here and there, so the coach moniker stays in my profile, but the regular gig is done. Free at last, free at last...!

At any rate, the plan is to use the gobs of time that have now opened up in my year to get back in racing shape (and race!), blog more and garden my heart out.