One With the Spirit

Yeah yeah yeah, I'm like four days overdue on updating this blog. I know. I'm sorry.

I've been on the road. Halfway across the country and back, to be specific, in a car. I went to Omaha, NE, which required overnight stays in three hotels and a lot more time sitting on my butt than I really wanted. But, I did get in one really great workout (thank you Hampton Inn at Arbor Plaza for the fantabulous gym with HGTV) and ate okay. Yeah, just okay. There was wine.

So to say I was itching to get back to the gym would be an understatement. With all of the traveling I've been doing since the beginning of July, really good workouts have been few and far between. I am jonesing to get back in my groove. Thankfully, I have a nice long stretch of homebodiness ahead of me.

But while I was gone, I wandered into the Strategic Air and Space Museum outside of Omaha. We looked at old fighter jets and bombers and space modules, as well as some old junk stacked up against a wall that looked like it was about to be turned into a fabulous new exhibit that would be assembled after we were long gone. And near that, I spied something interesting.

It was a display commemorating the squadrons of the Royal Air Force that apparently spent some time at Offutt Air Force Base from 1958 through 1982. Each squadron had a motto, and one caught my eye. It read, "I change my body, not my spirit."

I had no idea what changing our bodies had to do with being in the air force, or why someone thought you could only change one of them at a time. But regardless, it got me thinking about whether it was possible to change your body without changing your spirit, or vice verse.

When I (finally) arrived back in the gym Wednesday morning, I still hadn't decided. I was too preoccupied with the feeling that somewhere between Florida and Nebraska, I had become completely out of shape. Everything was difficult, and I was dragging myself around like a sack of potatoes trying to get back in gear. I'm sure the wine had nothing to do with it; it was all tidal flows or karma or something completely unrelated to wine.

So ANYWAY, its Friday now and I am just starting to feel like myself again. And this morning as I was hopping around the gym on one foot (don't ask...it was calf day and Awesome was feeling particularly puckish) I laughed as I felt my groove start to kick back in. I knew my answer: the Royal Air Force had it wrong. We can't change our bodies without changing our spirits. Without a fundamental change in the way we think, the way we act, and the way we react, we will not take the actions necessary to change our bodies.

I am soooooo glad that the next few months don't require travel during the work week. And I am sooooo glad that I am back in the gym training again. And I am so so so so so glad that my spirit is glad.

Welcome back to me!