Not a good week last week, but this week will be better!

Running

Last week was a bad week, for training, and re-imagining my routine. It started out okay, with me getting up at 5:30am for the first time in… well… a LONG time (race days don’t count). I got my workout done; Mondays are a rest day, so I did some AB exercises and 20 minutes of yoga. Then it was on to making lunches for everyone and getting ready to head out to work. All was clicking, and I wasn’t even that tired! The work day was uneventful, and in the evening I even got some emergency woodworking done at the trampoline gym (someone broke a window over the weekend and I had to replace the pane with wood until we could get it fixed).

My bad habits, however, worked to sabotage me. Ever since my university days, I’ve been a night-hawk. Going to bed at midnight is considered early to me. Well, you can’t get up at 5:30am and stay up until 1am. Maybe if I was 20 years younger, but not now. The other bad habit I have is watching TV. I love to watch TV; especially the news at 11pm, and the NHL playoffs. But these things conspire to keep me up late; I no longer have the time I need to prepare for the next day.

Needless to say, Tuesday was BAD. Slept in, rushed through the lunches, got to work late, yadda yadda. And the rest of the week pretty much played out the same way. Notice I don’t mention any workouts in there? Yup, didn’t run at ALL until Saturday morning, and I missed my Sunday long run.

But NO MORE! This week, I resolve to kick these bad habits, and aspire to get up 5 days in a row, and get some sort of workout done. Here’s what I think my ideal schedule would look like:

  • 5:15am - wake up
  • 5:30am - workout (run, yoga, abs/core, whatever)
  • 6:15am - breakfast, get ready for work
  • 7:00am - start making the lunches
  • 8:00am - leave for work

There’s a lot of time in there, because I’m usually pretty brain-dead in the morning, and it takes me much longer to do anything. Plus, I’m also dealing with last minute requests from the kids (“Dad, can you sign my agenda? Dad, can you look over my test package? Dad, can you read through my homework?”). If I could stick with this schedule EVERY DAY, I’d be all set. I could get my workouts in, and get everything done, and be at work at a decent time.

Of course, the KEY here is that in the evening, I start getting ready for bed around 9:30pm, and am in bed at 10:30pm at the LATEST. This, I think, will be the hard part. I’ve failed at trying to institute this schedule many times. But this week, I’m gonna DO IT!

(For the record, today didn’t work out so well. I got up, but late, did my workout, but putzed around too long and wasn’t able to make my lunch. I also had to take the car in for service, so I didn’t get to work on time.)