The jury is out as to how long it takes to start a new habit, but I can feel myself settling in to some really useful ones. As I do, the perceived tie between temperature or daylight and my mood seems to be severing. The exist.io service seemed to agree with me. There were never pronouncements about either of those correlating to anything. But last week, I got the following message in the app:

It’s true – physical activity, and especially riding my bike noticeably affects my mood. When I’m waffling about going for a ride, Sage always correctly reminds me that I never come home regretting a ride. This has been the case even on days that I crashed my bike or completely ran out of energy and ended up in tears on the side of the road.

This week I only rode to work two days as my bike is having some maintenance done. But the rides themselves were gorgeous. Just look!

I’ve been lax in my running, though and I have no good excuse. I need to either get back out there or dedicate those days to cycling. The latter may be more valuable as I am hatching a plan for next summer. I have no details to share just yet but this project will require my getting into the condition where I can ride 200+ kilometres/day for a few days. It will be difficult but not impossible. I’ve done rides over 170 km many times and have topped 200 recently as well. What has been missing before is dedicated training and regular riding. I’m up for it, though. I did say this year’s word will be “Endurance”. Having this plan has resolved my sadness about “not having a big project / challenge” to look forward to. I’m excited to share more…when I can. I still have a few moving parts to get connected before I am ready to share.

Meanwhile, with the weather still mostly above freezing and without slippery precipitation, I’m enjoying commuting by bike and have mapped out another extra-long route: over 30 extra kilometres on my usual 20 kilometre ride home.

In the short term I will have less mood data. Exist.io was a good mood tracker but pricey for the insights it gave me. So for now let me just tell you my mood this week has been great. 7/10 for the week with no down days at all. I attribute that to a few things beyond cycling:

Back in March I connected with KellyAnne Erdman, a sports dietitian with lots of experience both as an olympic cyclist but also as a Team Canada dietitian. I wanted to lose a bit of weight to reduce the weight on my legs so I could run again. Her advice was simple: a decent amount of carbs, a moderate amount of protein and all the veggies I could eat plus extra snacks on long rides. The weight loss has been steady but without much hunger. What has been interesting is that my sleep quality has improved – more deep sleep, less night waking.

Which brings me to sleep. As long as I get 6.5 hours/night and preferably more than 7, I feel great. Lower than that and my motivation, concentration and overall mood drop pretty quickly. So with my schedule that means I’m in bed by 9:30, sometimes even 9. My alarm is set for 5:15 though since the clocks went back I’ve often been waking at 4:00.

Reducing my screen time, particularly on social media, has been a huge help. In my case I’ve dropped from 12+ hours/week scrolling through status updates to less than one. And what have I done with the remaining hours? Some of that now is spent on my bike riding to work, the remaining are spent reading on transit. I’m now finishing a few books each week. Lately I’ve been reading lots of memoirs about endurance cycling, as you might imagine based on where my mind is at. Books like Other Ways to Win: A Competitive Cyclist’s Reflections on Success by Lee Craigie and This Road I Ride: Sometimes It Takes Losing Everything to Find Yourself by Juliana Buhring. While nominally these books are about cycling, there’s tons about working through discomfort and endurance while pursuing goals that I’m finding hugely inspiring.

But I can also see something else I have to be very aware of on the horizon. It’s not cold weather or snow. It isn’t dark December days when it will be dark when I leave for work and when I come home. Those are manageable, and I would go so far as to say those are not really factors in my well being.

The monster on the horizon is complacency – and I know it well because I fall for it almost every time. The thing is, I feel great – as good as I do in June or July. But keeping active and sticking to my habits is harder in the winter. Those books are great and wouldn’t it be nice to sit on the couch tonight instead of putting on layers and going for a run? No need to ride to work, it’s -5 anyway. Let’s just ride the bus and read. We’re behind on Taskmaster episodes – let’s stay up late and watch a bunch! This is the slippery slope that can lead me back to blaming the winter temperatures I’ve lived with my whole life for feeling sad.

The answer is, of course, to keep an eye on the goals. I won’t get ready to ride 200 km/day by reading – not even by reading ultracycling memoirs. So once again I’m committing to an activity plan for the week:

Tonight, I’ll go for a run after I get back from grocery shopping. Skipping running because I might focus on cycling more is not an option. Make the decision, change the training plan and then skip the run. (And likely ride a bike instead)

Then Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I’ll ride my bike to work. At least one of those days will include the 50km return ride for a 70km day’s cycling. There’s nothing stopping me from doing more, but never less.

Tuesday is a rest day and Thursday will be a run day. This gives me two days to ride the bus and enjoy myself.

Saturday I wake at 4:00 for volunteer work so it will be another rest day. Sunday I’ll include at least 60 km of riding. Rather than go down the rabbit hole of spending hours searching for a route, if I don’t have a route by 9:00 AM on Sunday, I will ride down to the Leslie Spit and do laps until I hit my total.

Clearly for me the key is to make the decisions early, remove the behavioural friction by making it so easy to do the right thing, and then be like my own loving parent – setting immovable boundaries and refusing to listen to rationalization while still acknowledging how right now the right thing doesn’t seem like the fun or comfortable thing.

What about you? How was your week?