Aug
03
The Excercise Gremlin
Posted under Motivation
I was prompted to write this when I read Jason Womack’s journal this morning (Link: Huh? Health and fitness? Oh yeah, that…). He is talking about how people can have trouble getting their excercise when their careers take them out of town once to several times a week. Yes, being in a different town every day would impact your excercizing. Heh, forget travel, what about at home?!?! I find one of my big challenges is to get appropriate excercise - even though I am a non-travelling sort of guy. I do go on long walks with my wife 3 to 4 times a week, yet I find that with everything pulling at me, it’s a struggle to do so. I don’t hire a lawn service, so I get exercise mowing my own lawn - yes push mower here - but still, I don’t feel like it is enough. Which brings me to my excercise gremlin. I have a love/hate relationship with jogging. I was an avid jogger for more than 5 years, but got out of it when I turned 30 or so. I love the feeling it gives me when I am not running. The after effects include more energy, feeling of well being, relaxation, etc. Now the downside: I simply HATE to run.
Running is torture. It seems to take an eternity to run just a mile or two. It’s tough on the joints. It’s a psychological battle where you have to shut down your mind from saying things like “WILL YOU STOP ALREADY?? YOU ARE KILLING ME!” I think about how one author wrote “Notice how you never see a runner smiling.” With that said, running is also a very powerful sport. I know of no other sport, with the possible exception of weight-lifting that allows you to conquer mind, your fears, your gremlins. It hurts in the beginning and hurts bad, but on the other side, well that’s great. Maybe you aren’t smiling while running, but you are probably smiling more than usual when you aren’t running - endorphins you get from running reduce aches and pains and leave you feeling great. — endorphins have the same effect on the brain as heroin you know…
Walking does provide the same benefit, but I have to walk triple the amount of time as I would normally run to get the same effect. For instance, a 20-30 minute jog 5 times a week would have me feeling like a million bucks, to get the same effect from walking, we are looking at 1-1.5 hours 5 times a week. Right now I am getting about 3 - 45minute sessions.
So I have a bit of a quandary. It makes sense for a busy guy like me to do some running. It takes less time than walking once you are in the routine, but watch out for that first month - it’s a Doozy! Maybe I’ll take a run this evening and think about it.
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