The Smiling Trick

I have started getting weird looks at the gym because I tend to smile at no one whilst sweating and huffing and puffing. I got the idea from Chris Horner, who has a permanent smile on his face even while doing something insanely hard, like attacking the Manayunk Wall from bottom to top on mile 100 or something of the 2004 race at Philly. He's one of my favourite cyclists to watch, super gutsy and talented. And always smiling. I also remember seeing him win at the 2003 San Francisco Grand Prix, the event that was solely responsible for the inception of my bike racing athletic career.


Sometimes I am not the most positive person. Shocking revelation, I know, because I totally come off as Pollyanna on the blog, but really I know I am sometimes a half-empty. So the smiling trick didn't come naturally to me, but I am working on making it a habit. For example today, my umpteenth run in a row on the treadmill due to the weather, stuck with Fox News on the gym TVs because this is Incline, tired from two hard weeks, tons of kids running around for some seemingly nonsensical elementary school field trip to the local workout facilities (??!?! and they were unsupervised, one little 9 year old got on a treadmill and jacked the speed up to like 8.5 and was hanging on to the arm handles for dear life before a gym staffer came and turned it off), anyhow I had a smile on my face for the whole 80 minutes and I had a great workout.