Hump Day is a gravel road with little traction and a 10% incline. Keep on running and riding. You’ll get through it.

You know the feeling. Wednesday. Hump Day. When will Friday come?

Sure, sometimes you face a weird week with Christmas on a Tuesday and all. So let’s have compassion on those who are already back in the office, staring at the steep gravel hill of Hump Day. Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. Lucinda Williams sings it best.

We all face the same situation sooner or later, it seems. People run or ride up the hills of Monday and Tuesday only to find that the road ahead is a switchback over a steep incline before reaching the descent days  of Thursday and Friday.

The Bell(y) curve

If your week too often looks like a pregnant Bell(y) curve with a giant bellybutton sticking up where you once had an ‘innie’, well, take heart. We’re all out here rooting for you.

There are good weeks…

Some weeks are just like a great run or ride. You hit the ground running on a Monday and before you know it, Friday’s over and you’re sailing home with everything completed on time so that you can do your long workout on a Saturday morning with a clear mind and a hopeful heart.

And bad weeks…

Then there are those other weeks. Days when you feel like you’ve been shoved into a black hole or a time warp. The minutes drag and the seconds eat away at your soul. That person with the annoying whistle while they work, or who talk too loud on the phone or hold whispering conversations right outside your door that you try to tune out? Well, sometimes they just can’t be avoided.

Then there is jealousy and envy…

You glance out the window and wouldn’t you know it? There goes a runner in bright shoes and matching top, trotting along happy as can be. Or you head out for a quick break at lunch and grab some sort of fast food you should not eat, and on the way back to the office, a sleek-looking cyclist on a $5,000 bike wearing the coolest kit you ever saw passes you by on the side road. You think to yourself: “I suck. Here I am a fat slob eating crap and there goes the guy who will kick my ass at the next criterium I race.”

Temptations and obligations

It’s not easy being a working workout lover. Temptations and obligations are everywhere. Some are things you want to do. Some are things you have to do. Some are things you wish you could avoid and can’t. Some are things you wish you could do and never find the time.

Hump Day Thoughts

These are Hump Day thoughts. Stuck in the Middle With You thoughts. Not quite there and not quite gone, you cling to the hope that somehow, someday, your schedule will be yours to decide.

We all wish that dream of personal freedom and Hump Day ignorance could come before retirement. Before the body is too old and the will too comfortable in its objectives.

Of course when you’re running a marathon, Hump Day really doesn’t arrive until about Mile 20. That’s when your glycogen is due to run out and The Wall lurks for many people. In cycling the same effect hits you at about mile 80 of a Century Ride.

So you have to use a combination of wise replenishment and mental strategy to prepare yourself for potential events such as these.

There is hope

But you make your own way in this world, and sometimes, with the help of God or a dying relative perhaps, you finally get the time you need to train without constraint.

Behold your own dedication!

I have a friend who finished the Madison Ironman last year. Joined him on several workouts. He’s a hard working physician who’s done well in life. Yet his work still calls him loud and clear. Watching him focus on his workouts was a pleasure that recalled the time when I actually ceased working full time in my early 20s and just ran. Ran like hell for a full year and set all my PRs, won some races and pretty much ignored the fact that the working world of 8 to 5 (it used to be 9 to 5…how’d that happen) even existed.

It wasn’t the wisest career move, I must say. But it was wise in terms of understanding what time allowed for that sort of existence. Pretending I was a pro athlete (I did have sponsorship) was both a fantasy and a reality at once. Sure, I found out eventually I was not a world class athlete, but I also found out other things about myself as well.

Surprise: There’s more to life than work

Like knowing that when you’re not working, you really do still exist. And that not everything in the world revolves around work so much as work revolves around you, hemming you in, cutting off your passage to contemplative existence. Fortunately or unfortunately, that’s the way of the world. Blame it on Adam and Eve. The first human f’ups.

For a while there for me, Hump Day ceased to exist. It was living out a fantasy that maybe I should not be so quick to regret. I once lamented to my own mother that the time spent racing and training was self-indulgent and she interjected: “Oh, I don’t know. I rather like you then. You were so focused.”

On anything but Hump Day.

It can still happen for all of us if we apply some basic principles of commitment and discipline in our training.

How to Wipe Out Hump Day (WOHD)

Heading into the New Year,  the best thing you can do for yourself to wipe out Hump Day and ride over those tarsnakes of negative thoughts about lack of time for training and learn to forgive yourself.

It’s just like downshifting to get up a hill on your bike or running in place at a street corner to catch your breath and gather your thoughts. You need to keep moving, but use the time to gather yourself and move on. Just don’t stop or go backwards. That’s the goal of personal momentum.

Momentary lapses are sometimes the worst

Forgive yourself those moments of weakness by being patient enough to avoid gorging on food at night the minute you get home from work. Settle down a bit from your day of work or commute and you just might  get out the door for a run or a ride.

Beseech your spouse and say something like, “You know, I need this for mental health, and if the chores can wait a little while longer, I’ll be a better person to live with.”

If all else fails, you can still do something simple and healthy like taking the dog for a walk! It all adds up in the end. Who knows, your dog might find something to hump and that always makes Hump Day a little more exciting, for the dog least. We heartily recommend that you yourself do not actually hump anything in public. Despite all urges to the contrary, that is not what Hump Day ever means. Not for us human types anyway.

Smoothing over Hump Day

You’ll be amazed how quickly Hump Day starts to smooth over when you realize that its just another hill, of the metaphorical––or is that allegorical type––of course. I think it’s both.

You’ve crested many such hills both in  in your day, and you will crest many more.

Godspeed, and watch out for those cinnamon rolls on the counter and bottles of cold beer in the fridge. They are the tarsnakes of diet and determination. Run past them first and you will have the willpower to only sample them later, and that is good. Your salvaged will is your best hope. It will help you past Hump Day and beyond.