After a summer spent pigging out on new cuisines and lazing about, it’s time to get back to work–that is exercising. In reality, this was truly an exercise in bad habits; of not sustaining an active lifestyle because I was traveling. I had definitely planned on running in SA, but a) it was cold! and b) I was reminded over and over that my neighborhood was dangerous, and although not that terrible, running alone wasn’t advisable and I wasn’t going to be able to find a running partner with any regularity. Again, these are just excuses, I mean I could’ve found alternative fitness activities to do in the house (which was also cold), but the point is, I didn’t.
Now I’m back in hot weather, where scant clothing is necessary. But with the diminished amount of clothes you can see everything. And I’m not loving what I’m seeing here, on top of which I just don’t feel like I should. So it’s back to being in training. I find that I have to set short term goals and give myself challenges over a set period of time in order to stay invested in this. Lifestyle changes aren’t easy, obviously. So my current goal is to run the Jazz Half-Marathon in late October. It only gives me two months to get in shape, where most training routines would recommend at least 10 weeks if not 3 months. We’ll see if I actually end up doing it. Most likely I’ll run like half of it and walk the rest of it. Who knows. What I do know is that halfway through this first week my body was hating me. That’s what I get for sitting on my butt all summer.
The other half of this challenge is not to consume ANY alcohol for at least this month, and it may get extended through October. Anyone who has lived in NOLA knows how difficult a challenge that is. Drinking is so tied into the culture. You get hot, you think, oh cold beer, or let me go get a daiquiri. The first couple days while I was still suffering in the heat of no power thanks to Isaac, I was incredibly aware of how much alcohol is a part of life here when every other hour I was offered a cold beer to cool down. So this will be a lesson in discipline, especially as I try to return back to some regularity of cooking and eating well.
Week 1 workout schedule:
Monday: Butt Buster Workout
Tuesday: 2 mile run
Wednesday: Dive Bombers, I completed 46
Thursday: 3 mile run (I actually only ended up doing 2.7 miles)
Friday: 300 jump lunges, took me 21:15
Saturday: rest
Sunday: 4 mile run
like black butterflies 