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April 02, 2007
A shout out for the women
I was watching a bike race yesterday and amazed by the power and speed of these women cyclists:
I have great appreciation for people who excel at something so naturally, especially sports. I've tinkered around with triathlons over the last few years. I'm rarely even close to finishing toward the front of the pack but I enjoy it so much it doesn't matter as much as having fun. I'm finding that the journey for me is not even so much about the actual event, but in training for it. With my travel schedule, it becomes like a game to fit in exercise. I'm about to start a 2 month training plan toward my next race on June 3rd. It's an all-women triathlon near Los Angeles. There's something about the women-only races that is so much more relaxed and supportive (sorry guys!).
People often ask me how I manage to train for something like that while traveling like I do. It's pretty simple. In my weekly reviews, I look forward on my calendar and block out time for my workouts. Before I started doing that it was too easy to blow off working out if I didn't feel like it. Now, I see it on my calendar and treat it like an important meeting. Sometimes I change what I thought I was going to do (indoor vs. outdoor if it's nice out), but I pretty much keep to the schedule as much as I can. I also check out ahead of time what my best options will be where I'm going, such as Athletic Minded Traveler or the hotel website. If it looks like exercise is not feasible because of the timing, location etc. than I will allow for that and try to make it up when I'm back home again.
What works for you? Would love to hear how other people keep exercise fun and interesting.
Posted by Kelly at April 2, 2007 11:06 AM
Comments
Well, I'm not training for a triathalon, but one thing that keeps me focused on getting exercise each day is my pedometer. My target is 10,000 steps per day, which works out to almost 5 miles with my stride length.
The nice thing about this approach is that I build in exercise throughout the day by parking my car far away from my building at work. On those days that I work from home, I try to plan a few walking errands (bank, post office, etc.) to help me hit my target.
Posted by: Don at April 2, 2007 04:37 PM
I used to schedule my workouts, but recently I moved "workout" to a repeating taskinstead of a calendar event. Working from home gives me the advantage of being flexible with my "schedule". My day goes something like this...I get up and get the kids off to school and while they wait outside for the bus, I sit in my office and start processing my inbox and checking email while I keep an eye on the kids at the bus stop which I can see from the office window. I was finding that some days I would have very little to process and my creative side would soon have me caught up in a new design or a blog entry. Instead of working out at the scheduled time, I would decide to take an extra hour or two to finish up my "project" before breaking to workout mid-morning. So far this "unscheduling" is working out well. Come summer, my workouts will be moved to our swimming pool where I spend most afternoons with the kids. That won't be scheduled either since we can't predict the weather. I don't need a reminder to swim either, the kids do that for me. ;)
Posted by: Gretchen Cawthon at April 2, 2007 09:11 PM
