Why I love early Monday morning exercise

December 6, 2023December 6, 2023 Sam B1 Comment

I have a new favorite Zwift group ride.

It’s the Herd’s Monday Morning Coffee Crew. Reasonably paced, full of dad jokes, and just 45 minutes long, it’s the perfect way to kick off the week.

The challenge is that it starts at 5:55 am.

It means I get up at 5 and have time for breakfast and coffee and then ride. And the pace is gentle enough that I can even multitask a bit and check in on overnight emails while riding.

It’s a good mix of early rising North Americans– this week it was led by a woman from nearby Toronto– and retired UK cyclists who are joining at a more reasonable hour. Or UK stay at home parents or UK #wfh people who are taking the “work” part of “work from home” lightly.

I haven’t checked out the discord channel yet. That would require finding my headphones very early in the morning and I’m not quite there yet.

I ❤️ it.

I mean, I’ve always loved very early morning exercise. It feels like found time. I’m just sleepy the next evening and go to bed early and set myself up well for a week of early to bed, early to rise. By the time 8 am personal training rolls around on Thursday it feels like a luxurious sleep in.

There is also something about Monday morning exercise that feels particularly right. It sets the tone for the week. Here is a thing that really matters, and I get it in first. If I workout on Monday I notice in more likely to fit in weekday workouts and less likely to weekend warrior it.

How about you? Are you a Monday workout person or are you more likely to give Mondays a miss after a weekend of movement?

See past posts about Mondays:

Movement Monday isn’t Magic but Move Anyway, but only if it works for you

Why I try to exercise on Mondays, or see you in the weight room this afternoon!

cycling · eating · feminism · fit at mid-life

Happy book launch dance! Sam’s wonderful weekend

April 30, 2018April 30, 2018 Sam B7 Comments

Thanks Google for animating the images of me celebrating the book launch on Sarah’s front porch. Photos taken before breakfast and the drive to London.

This was a great weekend. So good. Very very good.

It began with an interview on live television, on Global TV’s morning show. Tracy will tell you more on Tuesday but for my part I need to let you know that the experience was actually fun. Even the make up part wasn’t awful. Tracy and I are getting pretty good at communicating our body positive, age inclusive fitness message!

Here’s me wearing television make up. It was fine.

And here’s a link to the interview. You can watch us here.

Then I went to get a haircut and color with the wonderful Grace who also has her own TV show as it turns out.

I’m so blonde. Spring is here!

Then I went out in the evening to see a movie at the Hot Docs film festival. It was called “The Artist and the Pervert.” Here’s the description: “Georg is a famous Austrian composer, his wife Mollena a renowned American kink educator. Together they live in a public kinky relationship. This film documents their lives between perversion, art, love and radical self-determination.” I recommend it.

Saturday began with breakfast at my favorite Toronto breakfast place, Bonjour Brioche. Here’s blogger Cate and our friend Steve basking under the patio heat lamps.

I found out an interesting fact about Bonjour Brioche over breakfast. It turns out this is the location where they filmed the scene in the Handmaid’s Tale where Elisabeth Moss discovers that women no longer have credit when her credit card is declined. It’s a bit ironic to locals because this breakfast place is a cash-only establishment and never takes credit cards.

After breakfast we drove to London for the London launch of our book. I’ll let Tracy tell you more about that too but it was a super moving event was standing room only they sold out of books but more importantly there was a real warmth and energy in the room

Here are some photos of us signing books talking and standing around with our mothers. I love that photo best.

Tracy reading. Me listening, hands on hips.

Tracy and Sam carrying cupcakes and supplies.

On Saturday night I went out to BROADWAY BOUND!, put on by the Pride Men’s Chorus London.

My son sings in the choir. So much fun.

Sunday was the second bike ride of the season. We ramped it up a little bit from 50 km last week to 60 km this week but I say that the wind was the bigger challenge rather than increased distance. The wind was pretty intense. We all got some Strava personal-bests on the downhill tailwind segments and really struggled into the wind on the way back. I was also sad to discover that the local Starbucks in Byron has closed and so we had to ride back under caffeinated and a little bit late for our movie.

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