Happy holidays! Here’s hoping you survive them!
If you’re looking for a time of year that’s hardest on your body, you’d be hard-pressed to beat the one that kicked off with pants-unbuckling Thanksgiving and ends with a cold pack on your head New Year’s Day. Think about the damage alone done by the one-two punch of Thanksgiving and Black Friday.
Today, I have a story appearing in both The News & Observer in Raleigh and Charlotte Observer dealing with holiday stress. Not basic run-of-the-mill holiday stress, but last-minute, there’s-just-four-days-left, curl-into-the-fetal-position, AHHHHHH! holiday stress. You can click on the link above to read the story or, come back tomorrow and Thursday for an expanded version, complete with extra info & tips, outtakes, a blooper reel, an interview with the director, free popcorn —
I once told someone I could tell how I was doing mentally by my last mountain bike ride. If I’d taken an aerobic ride on fire roads — one where I could go relatively fast without paying much attention, one where I could let my mind drift — I was doing pretty good. I was still doing pretty good if the ride was half fire roads, half more aggressive, aggression-relieving singletrack. If the ride was all singletrack, all aggressive, all manic, all fast, well, then the bike was saving me $100 an hour on a leather couch.