Cock A Doodle Doo

First off, man starting a blog about being healthy and weight loss right before the holidays was definitely a terrible idea.  But I did this blog to be honest and hold myself more accountable for what I eat and how much I exercise. So here's to being honest...

So lately I feel slightly off the band wagon.  Basically I made a commitment to myself to get to the gym at least 3-4 times a week.  And if not to the gym at least doing some form of exercise.  Even with friends from college visiting I have been managing to uphold this goal.  My diet on the other hand has been a mess.  With friends visiting I ended up eating pub food for lunch and pizza for dinner.  Yuck.  That mixed along with holiday parties has resulted in a bending of my diet and multiple cookies being eaten.  I keep telling myself: "Come on, you're not Santa" but everytime I see a new holiday cookie, it takes every will-powered bone in my body to resist it.  At least I have motivation in that I don't want to end up looking like Santa (No offense Santa, I am a huge fan).

But at least I feel I have kept my gym routine pretty regularly.  I have been getting there at least 3 times a week but am still feeling like I need something to really change things up.  There is one thing that I think would make a huge difference.  Having a job that requires me to work late and unpredictable hours, it makes it hard to commit to consistent gym time in the evenings.  Therefore, I present you with my latest battle: morning workouts. 

Now anytime I actually manage to get myself to the gym in the morning, it always feels great.  I have lots of energy by the time that I get to work, it's great to not have to worry about rushing to a gym class at the end of the day and great to have the evening free to run errands or visit friends.  So you think that would motivate me to get out of bed in the morning and make more morning workouts happen.  But this is not the case.  My alarm goes off and I have every intention of making it to the gym, but with bad weather, daylight savings, and big comfy pajamas, it just gets harder and harder to crawl out of bed.  I am hoping to find some sort of magical fix to my difficulties getting to the gym in the morning to really get a strong exercise routine going.  Too bad there's no annoying rooster to aid in this endeavor.  For now sleep is a more enticing in the morning than an AM workout.  Me:0 Sleep: 1

I don't get the whole "running" thing...

So I feel back into it today after my weekend party lapse. Was feeling pretty unmotivated to go after having worked 10 hours Monday and another long day today, but I dragged my feet and got into the pool.  Now here's another secret that I've had (well a pseudo secret as some of my close friends and family are aware of this).  I secretly have had a dream of doing a triathlon.  Nothing big or crazy like an Iron Man because the thought of running 26.2 miles after swimming and biking a ton is probably the most unappealing thing to me ever.  Well actually, running in general just seems to be pretty unappealing especially a whopping 26.2 miles.

 It seems that a lot of my friends and peers are on this "lets run obscene distances" phase of life where I now know so many people that run half marathons, whole marathons, 5k, 10K, etc etc.  Miraculously somehow ( most likely due to the fact that at the time I was living with two runners) I signed up for and completed a 5k.  I feel that the running aspect of doing a triathlon is what has put me off up until this point and it was my hopes that doing the 5K would get me on this running craze that so many of my friends experience.  I just really never have, and am not sure that I ever will, like running.

It kinda sucks too as I love being outside and when it's nice out I'd much rather get exercise outside than hauling my ass to a gym.  But for one reason or another I just get started on a run and half way through it I'm miserable and just want to stop.  I'm hoping to find someway to overcome this as I feel that I can get the other aspects of a triathlon down pat.  I love to swim.  I love to bike.  I can swim long distances (in fact I tried out swimming the distance for a sprint triathlon at the pool today (750m).  I ended up swimming 800m and felt great afterwards and proceeded to swim a workout that consisted of an additional 1200m.

Maybe this week, since it feels like spring instead of almost Christmas, I will tempt a run in lieu of a gym workout to see how it feels.  I have been talking too long about wanting to do a triathlon and maybe it's time I just stop talking about doing it, and actually do what I need to, exercise and diet wise, to feel confident enough that I could do one.  Sigh, I just wish running was a bug that I could catch, but I'm not sure I'll ever love it as much as I love swimming.  Maybe I could find a way to love it enough? Any suggestions out there in the running world?