Kyle Seth Gray

Kyle Seth Gray's blog. Usually writing about tech, personal experience, but now leaning more towards health and fitness.

Addiction

Addiction.

There’s different levels. Categories. Types.

It could be a physiological, physical, or just plain obsession that’s all in your head.

It is, however, important.

A year ago, I got back in to running. I had been on and off since starting college, depending on if I had time (spoiler, you always have time), and whether I felt like it.

After getting back in to a running program again however, I got hooked.

There were days that if I didn’t get a run in, I started to feel anxious. Jitters that turned into just a crazed yearning for running. And even on days that I did plan to run, if it was going to be later that afternoon, I felt like I needed to do it ASAP.

Running is an addiction. (If you’re doing it right)

I did, however, end up pushing myself too hard.

Like a crash with any other addiction, I burned out hard when I injured myself last year. I’m still not sure what I did wrong, whether it was running nearly 30 miles in the few days after rocking hard at a Carly Rae Jepsen concert, or if my training plan was too harsh, or if I just landed the wrong way a few times too many.

I tried to run and just couldn’t - my knee was yelling at me to not.

So I ended up not running. For weeks. I tried using machines, and was able to somewhat do the elliptical, but I was bummed out. I could no longer run.

It took a bit, and experimenting, but I eventually got into spinning. I’m lucky that my gym offers free spin classes, so I went to a couple of those in April. Then over the summer, I started doing some of that on my own. I also had fun with biking about 16 miles around San Francisco when I was there for WWDC. Eventually I figured I needed a bike of my own.

Here I am now about a year later from running and getting into fitness seriously, and I’m addicted. I’m hooked on biking. As I type this, I just finished an hour of cycling in the gym. An hour. 22 miles on a Saturday after I stayed out until 2 AM. And tomorrow I’ll bike another hour or so to hit my calorie goal on my Apple Watch, and to also feed the beast that is my addiction.

I’m hooked. I love it to death, and cycling is one of the most dedicated things I’ve done for myself. I don’t know where I’ll go fitness wise from here, but I am going to keep doing it.

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