"Are You Ever Lazy?"

Someone asked me this once as I was putting on my skates. The surf was non-existent so I moved on to Plan B. The answer to the question is a qualified "no". Am I ever lazy when it comes to working out? No. Am I ever lazy about doing things that need to be done? Always. I couldn't surf today. My class was at 11:30. There's not enough time to get in the water between the time I drop off my child and the time my class starts. I did manage to walk my kid to daycare (20 minutes roundtrip), lift weights (30 minutes), ride my bike at the beach after class (50 minutes), and walk the dog (10 minutes). Most of my days don't look like this. But on a good day, I do two workouts. Today was a bit of a celebration. The warm weather is coming. We can all feel it. That kind of weather makes me want to go outside and stay outside. So I kept finding ways to be outside. The only bad thing about my non-surfing workouts is that there's still no escape from life. At least when I surf, I can be left alone. As a result, I relax. I don't really relax when I do my other workouts. I'm constantly waiting for the phone to ring (husband, student loan people, family) or I'm obsessing about something stupid (i.e., telling myself I'm not good enough at my job when I know, and have been told, that I'm a good teacher). The beauty of surfing, for me, is that you can simply let go. When I'm in the water, I stop worrying—most of the time—about the problems I have on land. I just surf. When I was a competitive cyclist, I was always thinking too much. That's been a curse for me as an athlete. But I'm finding now that the more comfortable I am with surfing, the less I think. Instead of having thoughts racing through my head, my mind is virtually empty. I'm learning to shut down intellectually. For someone like me, that's tantamount to being on vacation for two hours. For this reason, I will always be grateful to surfing.