(shaking her head in disbelief...)

Well, I did it again. I went on a terribly long training ride on Sunday with our cycling group. It was 50 PLUS miles over rolling hills (that's what they said... I classified most of them real hills!!). At one point we were on Lake Ontario!! Y'all know where I live - get a map and check it out. We went far!!!! Not to mention the last 15 miles or so it POURED the rain. And it was only 60 degrees.... yuck. The ride took a total of 5 hours. (we stopped a few times for bathroom, more water, etc...)

I always refer back to when I was a kid and I'd go to the Y in the winter and swim/ play my little heart out and then come home tired. That is what I remember as being "complete exhaustion". I strive for that feeling every time I do any kind of hard workout. I want to come home, my body tired and a general feeling of lead in my chest. As if I almost can't make it into bed before I fall asleep...

Yeah - well I can't seem to capture that kind of tiredness any more and it's really driving me crazy. I was for SURE that I would come home and all I would want to do was let the dogs out, take a hot shower and fall into bed for a few hours.

Nope. Didn't happen. I let the dogs out and took a ridiculously long, hot shower. (it takes a long time to scrub off all that bike grease and dead-animal-road-grime...) Although my body felt like I'd been beaten with a baseball bat from my lower back down, I COULD NOT fall asleep!!

ARG!!! I was completely frustrated. I did end up falling asleep later in the afternoon - but it wasn't that deep, coma-like sleep. I kept waking up, rolling over, tossing and turning.

What does on have to do to get that coma sleep!?!?!? (aside from propofol)

But I do have to say that the past few weeks I've been having exceptionally vivid, strange dreams. (so I'm falling asleep at some point...) At first I thought it was the Tylenol PM. But I've continued to have these types of dreams when I haven't taken any. And what's better (I think) is that I can actually remember them. Usually I know I dreamed but I can't really recall exact details.

So what have I been doing with this dream knowledge?? Racking my brain for deeper, true meaning. No, I'm not consulting any dream books (although I think I own at least one). But trying to put them into context in my real life. But sometimes there's that red-herring. For instance, you wake up thinking you had a dream about someone from in your past. But when you think about it the person was irrelevant. Your brain just put a face to a "character" in order to tell the rest of the story.

I'm not sure any of it means anything, really. But it gives my brain something to chew on while I'm running or biking. Because I DO know that I really have serious issues with the repetition that comes with running and biking.