the vicious more work <-> no ride cycle

you may know what this is about. in the valley i imagine almost everyone does. whether your work is "stay at home mom", vp of whatever or an individual contributor somewhere, it's not uncommon for us to work, work, work...

i get a lot of value out of my work. i generally love what i do and love working with people. the social aspect of a job are one of the major benefits if you ask me.

even so, i still struggle with how much my work impacts the "other" things that are important to me. in this case it's riding my bike. why aren't i talking about how working too much affects time with my family? because i just don't let it. family comes first, then work, then cycling.

so for me cycling is like the last line in product development (QA or i18n) where the amount of time actually available to do that one thing just shrinks and shrinks as previous areas go long and the deadline (or hours in a day) fail to budge.

after a certain point i'm riding so infrequently that i start to say f*^k it - what's the point if i'm barely riding at all anyway. then i'm not riding at all and BAM - i'm back to the point where it's a struggle to get in any sort of riding shape.

as many cyclists know it takes months to get INTO good riding shape and mere DAYS to fall out of it...