Exercise Revelation

Last weekend I spent a lot of time thinking about exercise and why I go all out for a few weeks and then stop doing any exercise for a few weeks, only to restart and repeat the cycle. This has been even more apparent over the past few months with boot camp. As much as I enjoyed boot camp and saw results, getting up at 5 am made exercising a chore that made me have to change many aspects of my life to fit it in. No wonder why I was burning out! So I decided to reclaim exercising as something that I enjoy doing and something that makes me feel better.

Instead of forcing myself to get up at the crack of dawn for boot camp, I have been sleeping in and getting up at 7 am so I can go running or walking before work. It feels great to exercise on my schedule and I have enjoyed running again in this incredible fall weather we are having in Vegas.

After not really running since the San Francisco half marathon at the end of July, I am remembering how much I love running. In fact, the past couple of weeks of running have made me commit to running the Austin Marathon on February 17. I had planned on running the 3M Half Marathon at the end of January, but we have an exhibition opening that following weekend and it wouldn't be a good time to take off work then. More importantly, I want to challenge myself and run the marathon stronger and hopefully faster than I did this past year. I only have 18 weeks to train which is a lot shorter time frame than my training schedule for my first marathon, but I'm convinced that with some hard work I can easily get ready for 26.2 miles.

I officially did my first long run on Saturday and ran 5 miles in just over 1 hour, which was pretty fast considering I had to stop at lots of traffic lights and I hadn't run that long in 3 months. This weekend is 7 miles and I think I will be ready if I follow my training schedule and fit in three 3-mile runs during the work week. Bring on the miles....