As good as it gets

It's been a busy week. On Monday I managed to squeeze in time to do both my rehab exercises and a close-to-record go at Stoltzekleiven. But then I was on travel from Tuesday to Friday, and I did not get to do any of my routine training. I had in fact very optimistically packed a whole mobile physiotherapy center with me, but the days consisted of late nights and very early mornings, and in the end I was just too tired to do anything else than sleep when I was in my hotel room.

 

I had had three consecutive days of hard exercise before leaving, and I thought at least that the rest would be good for me. However, sitting still for long hours for four days seemed to make everything worse. When I finally got home Friday evening I was feeling stiffer than ever, and the injury seemed to have worsened. I felt an urgent need to get moving. Fortunately, the weather report for Saturday was wonderful and I had already agreements with several friends for going to the top of Gullfjellet. On Saturday was the Gullfjellet Opp 2015 race, and I had decided several months ago to participate. Yesterday, instead of cancelling my plans, I participated in the class for fun, where your time is not registered. As the weather report turned nicer and nicer, more and more friends decided to join. Not all of them the race, but many of them the slow fun walk up. In the end we were many who took it easy, and it was such an incredibly nice day. We started early enough to get to the top just before the winners, so that we could cheer them into finish, and enjoy the excitement there.

Interesting enough, the topic of the conversation many times during the walk up was how important it is to rest and listen to your body, and how we are not really very good at it usually. We all enjoyed so much to take an easy pace walk up and just talk and lough all the way, and have time to stop and enjoy the views and take photos. And we kept asking: "Why don't we do this more often? Why do we always run?" I felt so lucky that I had so many friends who decided to do the easy walk this particular time rather than the race. Although the weather was sunny at the start, it got more and more cloudy as we ascended, but then it started to clear up more and more as we got closer to the top. Exactly at the moment when we reached there it became completely clear and sunny. Wow, could we have been more lucky?!

I very often find myself feeling lucky. On the other hand, I am sure that in reality I'm not more lucky than others, but somehow I spontaneously end up taking things to be my luck. If a nice coincidence happens I get so excited. In the middle of all injury and rehab at least I feel that I have been very lucky with circumstances around the competitions that I missed. Like on Saturday, I am sure it would have been much less fun to race, especially since more friends did the easy walk than those who raced. In Bergen City Marathon 2015 it was raining heavily, and Bergen Fjellmarathon 2015 was so muddy and slippery that improving my time from last year would probably not be so easy. So in a way I am not that sorry that I could not race in them. And I did participate in some sense, since I was there and cheering and having fun. Another piece of luck hit me last week when the Storehesten Opp 2015 race was cancelled due to too much snow. I have been to this peak once but not during competition. I was planning to participate this year, having my time registered, but not pushing it beyond my injury. This would have been fine, but you see I have a bet with my father-in-law, who sat a limit last year on how well he thought I could perform. I am sure to be able to beat that limit, but probably it would not have been possible this year. So the cancellation of the race suited me just perfectly!

I think it is important to pay attention to the good things that happen and register them as good luck. I am afraid too many people rather pay attention to the not so good things, and just register those as bad luck, without observing the good things. How can you ever be happy if you do that? If you feel sorry for yourself, especially if you think your bad luck is the fault of others. Of course we must allow ourselves to feel sad; after all what is life if you don't experience the whole range of feelings? But try not to get buried in sadness or despair for too long. And please don't misunderstand, I am not talking about real life crises or serious illnesses; I know that not everything is possible to get over just thinking positively. But for a normal average everyday life, where not much extraordinary is happening, I think having the ability to get excited about the little good things and ignore the not so good things, is a step towards happiness. Fortunately physical exercise makes you able to do exactly that! With endorphins running in your body all the time, all you see are birds, flowers, and the sun. I read an article last weekend which I found very interesting. A famous Norwegian psychiatrist says that we should all have 0.5 per-mille alcohol in our body constantly. I agree completely! :-) But you can indeed achieve the same or even better effect with physical exercise.

Today Frank and I repeated last weekend's discovery, the path from Munkebotn, via Dræggehytten, to Rundemanen. I just like this path more and more. This time I was even able to run parts of it, my first running steps in a long long while. The weather was even nicer than last weekend, and although we were a bit too late for the regular Sunday meeting of Melkesyre at Brushytten, guess what: yes more luck, they were still there when we got there!

Every single day offers many options. Make sure to choose those that will make you happy!