Active Rest from a Tiring Day?

8/4/14 251lbs, 57 pounds lost since 8/30/11

Yesterday I went on a relaxing, nonsensical ride that my body thinks it should not have gone on. It illustrates that when a person is tired, he or she may not be tired the way they think they are.

Huh?

I had worked 7 straight days when I came home from my job yesterday afternoon. I manage a restaurant, if, when done correctly, is a lot of work. I'm not interested in arguing with anybody about whether a restaurant management position is "work" or not – You'd be surprised how many people think it's easy. There's an immense amount of stress, and if a manager wants to keep loyalty and his or her job it takes

Me and my crew

active involvement. Every day leaves me tired, and after a string of days all I want to do is collapse into an easy chair when I arrive home.

Yesterday afternoon was one of those days. When I pulled up into the driveway, I sat in the car for a few minutes so tired I was unable to move. When I finally drug myself into the house and sat down, I did not want to get up. But I was in the middle of a little "island" of time where I could put on the gloves and skid lid and take the bike out for aerobics. A busy Grandpa has to take advantage of these little islands, or bike rides (and their associated health bonus) become rare.

So I forced myself out of the chair, and said to myself "I'm going to ride anyway. I don't care if I'm tired."

When I got out on the bike, however, I realized something that I've learned over and over in my cycling career: and that is tired from work and tired from bicycling are two different things. Even though work

My Restaurant Management Style

was physical, most of the "tired" feeling was emotional and the result of the stress.  Getting out on the bike, getting my heart rate up into "aerobic" range, feeling the sweat begin to form on my face, breathing getting faster and my lungs filling up, and my legs beginning to burn - - FEELS RELAXING AND RESTFUL! So after a few minutes of riding, I felt like I wanted to ride all day. The tired feeling from work was gone.

This is, honestly, a lesson I've learned over and over before. When my family and I lived in the Denver area, I commuted to work on my bike extensively, many days 25 or 30 miles. I grew to appreciate the long ride home after a busy day at work, because it was so refreshing and relaxing. And now, as I have begun my journey through my sixties, I'm rediscovering the same thing: Exercise is not tiring, in the sense that the human race is tired. It doesn't make a person irritable, or unsocial, or unkind. It doesn't fill us with stress, and doesn't make us wish everything would just go away. To feel the air on your face and the burn in your quads is, somehow, so restful after a long day. With the spirits lifted, the stress is gone.