On Aug. 31, 1979, I did three noteworthy things: left for college, stopped eating meat, and vowed to exercise every day until graduation.

The vow fell short by one day.

As a senior, I woke up sick one Friday, wanted to run in the cross-country meet Saturday, and felt staying in bed all day might make that possible. It did.

While that exercise vow only produced plain-vanilla results during my three-sport college career, it created a peaches ’n cream addiction: the absolute need for a daily workout. This habit has led to 43 years of Tupelo-honey health and some bike racing results far sweeter than butterscotch fudge.

Since freshmen orientation, I’ve worked out on 11,477 of the 11,487 days - and rarely for less than an hour.

Now some of the workouts were pretty feeble, like an easy one-hour walk the day after elbow surgery. Others missed the mark and did little more than burn calories.

But other than the handful that ended in injury, I can confidently say that I’ve benefitted from every single one.

That’s because exercise is the best attitude adjustor I know.

But I also know something else. There are days when I don’t feel like working out.

As I age, in fact, that seems to be the case as often as not.

I talked about that with my brother two weeks ago on a Saturday night.

A long ride in stiff winds that morning ride had not gone particularly well. I got dropped in the middle of the fast part by some young guns, and I rode the rest alone.

Plus my hips and glutes still ached - despite 20 minutes of lying on the floor with my legs against a wall and 25 minutes of painful self-massage with a really firm foam roller.

The thought of doing any riding Sunday, let alone my usual 60-miler, seemed as improbable to me at that moment as eating a bacon cheeseburger with a side order of pork rinds and washing it down with a super-sized soda.

I also told him I really wanted to write about battling against that thought, but had tackled the topic a few times before.

Little brother then played Socrates said, “So just because you wrote it once before, you can’t repeat it?” Before I could muster a reply, he asked, “And what was it you said last week about Luke’s batting-cage session?”

I had quoted Hannah More on the nature of people: That they don’t really need to be informed as much as reminded. So now that I’ve spent one night feeling like the little brother, let me be a big brother again by reminding you what to think when you want to skip a workout.

That you are more than your emotions.

The world’s best-known Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, uses that exact phrase in many of his lectures on mindfulness. Because the Buddhists believe the road to enlightenment must ultimately be traveled on your own, though, Hanh rarely says anything more.

But I will. I’ll tell you that my feeling of not wanting to ride last Sunday morning got worse when I woke and saw three inches of snow. Now, it needed to be done indoors - which meant three hours of listening to a tinny Apple iPod from 2005 while staring at a wall.

To get on the wind trainer, I cut a deal with myself. I’d take a full hour to warm up, and if I still felt unmotivated and achey, I’d cut the workout in half.

The goal of the warmup was to “wash it away” the ache by trying different pedaling styles at different cadences. I’m not sure if that really worked or if those analgesic exercise-induced endorphins finally kicked in, but in an hour I felt good enough to attempt the tough intervals I had planned: 12 two-minute efforts at about a 95 percent with plenty of easy pedaling in between.

But the ache in my hips and glutes returned by the end of the first interval. Instead of giving up and pedaling easily, though, I notched it back to 85 percent or so and focused on relaxing the areas that ached.

“Quicker, not harder” became the mantra I panted. The ache lessened. Suddenly, I was super motivated and mentally riding the roads where the young guns dropped me yesterday.

I’d imagine the wind picking up, the pace picking up, and so would my effort. I’d pedal hard enough to increase the ache, then pedal quicker rather than harder to make it dissipate.

That worked until it didn’t, and when it didn’t, that was okay.

By that time I had ridden for as long as I should’ve ridden with the youngsters yesterday - and about as intensely.

I finished feeling satisfied and something else: that my attitude had been properly adjusted. I had a great rest of the day.

Keep this story in mind the next time you want to skip a workout.