Darkness

I live right by the lake, so I am in the perfect place to go on a daily jog. The feel of the cool air, the bright sun, and the long quiet jogging path make it an ideal location for any exercise you care to name. I follow the same route since it is easy to track my journey and figure out how far I have gone in a day versus the previous day.

As I learned though, it's a whole different story at night. Usually, I jog during the day or at the latest dusk. One fine day my only chance was to go at night, and it was a totally different experience. Even though the path is bordered by a large park, there are NO lights along the way or along the path! As in, next to none the whole length. I should mention, it runs parallel to a busy road which does have street lights, but they are on the opposing side of the path. It makes for an exhilarating and slightly frightening journey, as I couldn't see the ground in front of me or obstacles. I nearly hit several branches on the way, too.

This isn't to say I didn't like it, but simply that it was unexpected. I would definitely go again. It's fun to experience the familiar in unfamiliar ways! 

Overclocked

I hit a wall pretty hard the other night.

After a week solid of jogging every day, I had an incredibly long work day, clocking in at more than 14 hours. On top of that, I had another 8:30am shift the next day (this was Mother's day weekend, Armageddon in the restaurant world). Even if I had been able to exercise, it would not have been advisable. It took most of my energy just to make it through those 2 days. So I missed one day since I had no opportunity and the next since I was utterly exhausted. My legs were like stilts and refused to be moved very far.

I initially had plans to go jogging anyway and just push past the pain. No dice, as my legs were far too sore. Even after a long series of stretches, I couldn't coax any action from them. Probably just as well, since I could have torn something from overdoing it. Don't worry, even after missing those two days, I jumped right back in the fray the next day with a steady jog, and it felt great!

Cramping

I actually had the desire to jog on my way home. That was new. I'm fairly active in my daily life. I always take the stairs instead of the escalator or elevator (when possible). I love to walk or ride my bike around town, and my work calls for me to be on my feet most of the time. I even commute by bike!

But while I like and enjoy this physical activity, I've dreaded more direct forms of exercise like jogging, sit-ups, and the like. I don't know why, but I have developed a mental block about the whole thing, and it seems absolutely terrible to me. I pant, get all sweaty, and generally feel like I was just run over. The only motivator is the intense satisfaction you get when you've finished the exercise, and that can be easily dismissed by the warmth of a good lazing around.

I rarely take public transit these days, but it was a cold and rainy so I decided to give it a shot. This meant a whole of extra sitting and about an hour of time to kill. Eventually my mind began to wander and I realized I was thinking about a jog, since my legs were feeling cramped. I had gotten so used to the daily jog I wanted it to happen!

Progress of a kind, yes. But when I got home (and off the streetcar), my legs warmed back up. So it was still a few hours before I actually went and did it. So there's still some distance to go, physically and mentally.

Fully Equipped, part 2

Whenever you make definitive, declarative statements, you need to be ready for them to be proven wrong, usually almost immediately. Such is the case with my disdain for proper exercise gear. I have definitely grown to appreciate the idea of proper jogging clothes, even if I have yet to to take the plunge and actually buy some.

To be sure, I always knew exercise gear was important and that I would need to wear something more appropriate. I was just disdainful of the "pro" gear sold by the Nike store and the like. But my very base outfit of jeans and just any shirt hasn't worked out too well so far. It works fine and all, but I have been doing enough exercise that it's starting to feel inhibiting.

So, hubris.

Un-hiatused

I've gone the longest I ever have without blogging about the monthly challenge, and that kind of defeats the purpose of the whole thing. But it has been unavoidable at the most and excusable at the least. For these past few days, I have been working a lot. Nothing new there, I'll admit. But with the warmer weather, I have had a lot more shifts at restaurant in which I work, meaning I am doing double shifts for most of the week.

When you add into the mix the exercise (which I have been fairly but not perfectly diligent about; see the next post), and I have even less time. You see, the problem with this month's challenge has been it is the only one that actually takes extra time to do. Most are diet-related, meaning I just eat different foods than I normally would. Even last month, I freed up more time with my challenge, as I avoided a time waster even more. But this challenge, I have to factor in an extra 30 minutes every day to fitness, which I would otherwise spend in leisure or composing a blog post.

So even when I'm done the exercise for that day (something requiring a feat of effort, considering the muddy, rainy, and generally too cool weather), I am disinclined to blog, presuming I had the time. But I am making an effort to correct this imbalance now, and I aim to fix it starting now. I doubt I'll get 11 posts down, but I will do my best!

Biking

I was forced to get a little innovative. As it happened, today I was unable to go for my job. I literally would have had no time to go exercise, due to other commitments from work ( I have a couple of different jobs). Luckily I had a stroke of inspiration. I was supposed to go to a work related training today, and since it was located at a relatively nearby location, I decided to try and bike it.

Now, I am a regular cyclist, and use my bike to commute several times a week. This usually takes about 30 minutes. The journey I took north today was about 40 minutes one way. On top of my usual commute, this meat a 50+ minute journey one way. Between that and the journey back, I definitely felt I had exercised my body.

Strained

I think I went too hard on the exercising. I very quickly found jogging to be much easier to work into my day. Or rather, I was more inclined to perform an activity that I had already done successfully. The other exercises I tried were fine, but without a proper mat and some more appropriate work out clothes they were difficult to perform.

So since the start of the challenge, I have just been running. Up until today, at least. I had been jogging for 7 or 8 days and had spent the day before biking for almost two hours. My muscles were sore to the point of extreme stiffness. I'm not sure, but it felt as though my muscles were in need of a break. Or rather, they forced one on me. They simply refused to cooperate, and I couldn't jog.

So I merely made sure not to overstrain anything so I could prepare for the next day, and to stretch a couple of times to keep nice and limber. Although today was not an exercise day, I have perhaps learned it is not always possible to go as hard as I can for everything.