Rolling with the Punches

I'm doing a second post today since tomorrow I have to work extra hours to cover for someone on vacation. There was a time when I would get snarky because my routine would be messed up. I kept lists and schedules and planned everything to a tee. Besides driving my lady crazy it made me worry to much about small breaks in routine.

Maybe it's maturity, us guys do tend to aquire that late in life, or that I just got tired of spending time doing them, but I quit trying to keep things so structered. Now I just workout according to how I feel. If I'm feeling tired, I'll do an easy workout or just take a rest day. If I wake up feeling strong I'll do a good hard workout.

I get in 2 to 3 weight workouts a week, with at least one day between. So if something comes up one day I'll just move the weight workout to the next day or even the day after, but I do get in at least 2 a week. I always do at least 3 miles before touching a weight. I want to be good and warm, weights are wonderful for building strength and sculpting your body, but they can be very dangerous. Screw up one time and hurt your back or try lifting cold and you can set yourself back for a long time. So I don't try to squeeze in a quick weight routine with out the warm up miles, the risk just isn't worth it.

Another thing I stopped worrying about is time on my training walks. I will time the total but not stress if it's slower than last time. Some days you just do better. It's the time on race day that counts not on the training walks. You need to take some easy time after a very hard effort so if you make your training walks hard you will be tired when it comes to race day. Better to train at a moderate effort and then when race day comes go for that max effort, then take it easy for the next week.

There was a time that I would go out on a beautiful day have a great walk, feel just super, strong and powerful, then look at the watch and feel bad about it. Well every walk is different, some days you are more rested, better hydrated, better fed, ect.... Don't lose your joy of a good day by stressing over the time. Better to judge the effort by how it felt and how well it charged your mental batteries. If your having a good time out there training you will look forward to coming back for the next workout, but if you make it a negative you have to force it.

Make it fun, make it satisfying and make it fit into the time you can reasonably devote to it.

Thanks for reading

Happy Panda