If nothing else, this newfound motivation has me thinking about my exercise routine more. Although I wouldn’t say I’m “training” yet, I am more aware of my exercise plans for the day and week – as well as what’s taking place from week to week. The nice thing about this approach is that it makes me more committed to training through the winter. Last winter it was easy to just let things slide when the weather got crappy. But now I feel like “crappy” will have a different meaning – I’m more willing to venture outside because I have a race on the calendar. And if things do get really bad I’m more likely to find other alternatives to get a workout in.
Recently I mentioned doing my best to get one workout in per
week despite the conditions. I guess that’s easier said from the comfort of my
computer screen than the reality of outdoors. Yesterday’s plan was for a
lunchtime run with some threshold work throw in. As I worked through the morning,
I could see those plans start to evaporate as just enough snow fell to make
things sketchy. I’m talking about less than half an inch of snow. But that was
enough to leave me feeling uncomfortable with picking up the pace. Normally
this wouldn’t bother me, but lately we’ve been having some thaw/freeze cycles taking
place. The thought of hitting a patch of ice covered by a little snow doesn’t
make the harder effort worth it to me. Instead, I just ran an easy 5 miles.
I can still remember a blog post I wrote years ago after we
got about 2” of snow and the roads were a slushy sloppy mess that made running unenjoyable.
At the time I was Nordic skiing a lot, so I juxtaposed photos of the sloppy roads
and the freshly groomed corduroy of the ski trails. I think the title was
something like “You Choose” – implying why would anyone run in that footing
when they could be skiing instead. I bring this up because of the recent conditions,
but also because Tuesday night I went for my first ski of the season. There’s
no denying that it’s incredibly fun and a great workout. Of course, being a
perfect 28 degrees helps a lot too. It’s just nice to have options to help
maintain my fitness in the winter.
Quote of the day;
“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” – Lao Tzu
2 comments:
When I finally get around to training it is hard for me to do anything less than 6 miles. If my week has a bunch of efforts under 6 miles I am either damaged, training twice a day, or running out of time. The last one is a real consideration as sometimes those workouts can take 1:20:00 for a lousy 6 miles.
I used to never run less than 5 miles. If I couldn't get that amount in, then I just wouldn't bother running that day. Now I am for at least 20 minutes because I think that's the bare minimum to gain any aerobic fitness.
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