Out of practice

I was out of town attending the ZendCon conference in Santa Clara last week. The conference took pretty much all day when you counted in the breakfasts and after session receptions that they had. After returning to the hotel in the evening, I would spend a lot of time catching up on emails and work that I had missed during the day. Consequently, my regular routine was rather messed up. I expected this to happen, but I didn't expect the results I found when I came home and tried to jump back into everything as though nothing had happened.

The first thing I noticed that was off happened on Saturday, when I tried to go for a run. I hadn't done any type of exercise at the conference, but I had been lazy for a week or so before that as well. The interesting thing was how sore and tired I was after this run. I came home, took a shower, went to bed, and slept for the rest of the day. This was really strange to me considering that I was training for a triathlon this summer and got used to distance running. This was half the distance of my normal training run and was a lot slower. It just surprised me how fast you can revert if you let up just a little bit in your exercise patterns.

This really hit me on Wednesday when I attended my symphony rehearsal. I had only missed one week and thus only one rehearsal. However, I played terribly. It was like I was trying to site-read the music. Not only that, but my fingers weren't hitting the right place on the fingerboard, so I was out of tune the whole time as well. Surprising that I only miss one rehearsal and this is what happens.

It just goes to show that consistency is key. In music, don't stop practicing or you'll slide backwards pretty quickly. In sports, you'll be out of shape really quickly if you get out of your training routine. Just stick to your routine, practice deliberately, and keep improving!