Poojan (Wagh) Blog

I’m training not so much so that I can improve my run time, but to realize my intent in signing up for the race: to get in shape. I figure I need to do more to get in shape, and signing up for the race motivates me to run regularly.

For the past three weeks, I’ve run 3.5 4 miles every Monday, Wednesday,and Friday. I’ve heard that you have to excercise for a month before you can see results. Hopefully, I’ll keep it up for a week or two more.

Not sure if it was the right thing to do, but I ran this morning (Wednesday) and the race is tomorrow (Thursday) night. Hopefully, that gives my body enough time to recover.

I tend not to wear headphones while I run. I never thought about it before, but the quiet time is really nice. No, I’m not always looking around, absorbing the natural surrounding. In fact, I find myself thinking a lot. Which is good: I realized that I’m always listening to a podcast or something. I don’t give my brain enough time to just drift.

For a while, I used to try to stick to a set schedule. I’d get very angry at myself when I deviated from it. If, for some reason, I didn’t get a work-out in the morning–or if I didn’t put away the laundry and the kids dispersed the formerly clean clothes throughout the house.

What I recently realized is that I don’t have to do that schedule every day–and I certainly shouldn’t agonize when I deviate (even on a regular basis) from the schedule. What’s more important is that I return to it at some point. I’ve had some pretty long fitness kicks, but usually, I end up going 6 months to a year of no excercise.

It’s more important to make this daily routine a daily default rather than a rigorous discipline. What do I mean by default? I mean that unless I have a reason not to, I am going to stick to the things that help me become healthier.

Here are some of my defaults | and some reasons I might skip them:

• Working out (running or weight training) in the morning | sleeping in late
• Packing a lunch (rather than eating at the cafeteria or at a restaurant) | meeting my friends for lunch
• Drinking lots of water | there’s really no good reason not to
• Folding and putting away laundry in the evening (used to be morning) | playing with the kids or helping with homework
• Emptying the dishwasher in the morning (and possibly re-loading it at night) | slept in or the kids got up early
• Reading a book (rather than surfing the web) at night | but I really want to write that blog entry about healthy defaults

Over at The Growing Life, Clay Collins talks about life balance and insanity. I didn’t realize it before, but that post influenced me in re-assessing my daily schedule (and the discipline I tried to enforce on it).

What’s important to me is that I ensure I don’t derail from my default for too long. It’s all too easy to decide that I need to write 10 blog entries right now–or I need to learn a new programming language. Usually, when I do (resume my default), I find that my default is a welcome return.