Thursday, May 5, 2011

Making it work

EDIT: Are you serious? Someone searched this TWICE and my blog came up? "have a nice life. who am i kidding? i hope you get hit by a moving truck."

I mean, sometimes I get frustrated with Sean and all, but never that much...

What started out as a comment on Running Girl's post, turned out looking incredibly long-winded, so I'm just going to go ahead and preface this by saying you should check out her post here and then you'll get the basis of my post.

For anyone too lazy to click over and read her post, to sum it up she basically is talking about finding the healthy balance between planning your days, your workouts, your food, etc. while also allowing for life to intervene like it so often does.



Like her, I'm incredibly particular about my workouts. I am a very list-driven person (just take a look at my planner on any given day) and I thrive off of crossing things off one at a time. I also have found that I execute workouts at a much higher success rate if I know ahead of time what I'm going to do and have some sort of schedule about it.



Unfortunately for my perfectly planned out life, LIFE has a way of jumping in the way of those plans sometimes. It doesn't matter if all of my t's are crossed and i's are dotted - sometimes life just throws a wrench in all of that.

It's taken me a long time to figure out what works for me. And what it comes down to is schedule + flexibility. I am at my best when I have mapped out certain training runs that I have to hit - though I am flexible about which days I hit them. I have at least one hills or speed workout that I want to get in per week. I try to do at least one day of yoga and one day of pilates (though usually I just get in one day of one of them) and I try to get in 2 days of total body strength training (even if that means one day of arms, one of legs, etc. and then one total body day).

What works for me won't work for everyone, myself included sometimes.

There are days that I have planned to go to spin class and I wake up and I don't feel like driving to the gym (It's really far. A whole 7 minutes). So I'll pull my bike out of the garage and bike around the neighborhood, or I'll do an interval workout on the treadmill instead.

And there's days where I finish a run and know I need to get in some abs, but when I peek into my bedroom and see my husband still sleeping peacefully, the only right option at that point is to crawl back into bed and snuggle up to him and nap for 20 more minutes (so what if I did that yesterday? I got my ab workout in after work!).


Lovelovelove!

That's what it's all about to me though, making it work for YOU. No one else's schedule will fit yours. You have to find that balance.

Kind of like skipping dinner so you can do this:




Don't judge that we are wearing the same shirt. It was not planned. And dinners consisting of froyo are perfectly acceptable. They hit my calcium AND fruit needs and I got an added bonus with the dark chocolate chips that I added in. And I'm pretty sure that pecan praline froyo counts as a "healthy fat". Plus, little brother had never been, so it's obvious that he needed to experience this wonderland. Duh.

Oh and for anyone who cares, Yogurt Cup is 5.1 miles away from my house. Which is a perfectly legit running distance to be rewarded with froyo after. The hubs will just have to meet me there...


2 comments:

  1. Love it! I think you're my long lost sister. That is exactly how I feel. I think my gym is about the same distance away, and sometimes it's like, really? I just can't be bothered to rally the motivation to make it happen.

    I have multiple lists going at any time. Packing list for a trip we're taking tomorrow. Work lists. Costco lists. Personal to do lists. Workout training plans. I'm a nut, but it works for me & I love it. Like you, I just found that I had to be flexible AND have a plan. Without both, I'm screwed.

    Thanks for the shout out on your blog. :-)

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  2. I totally agree you've got to make it work for you. I'm a list person too and I like to plan my workouts for the week at the beginning of the week. I know I can always adjust them based on schedule, but that way I know I have a goal. Now I want some fro-yo!

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