I’m five weeks into an eight week training program for a 5k. “So what,” you ask? You’re right. Compared to plenty of people I know (my friends Nate Kvamme and Grant Harrison just rode in the ultra-grueling Leadville Trail 100 won by Lance Armstrong), a 5k is nothing. But for me, this is a big deal.
Two months ago, my sole exercise consisted of walking – typically about 7,000 steps per day. After keeping my weight constant for over two years, it was starting to creep up again. But I didn’t feel as though I had any time for exercise, and the idea of getting fit was just too daunting.
Health isn’t easy. There are plenty of factors in our culture that work against healthy living. But as you’ve seen before on this blog, we’ve decided not to focus on getting people to make radical changes in their health behaviors. It’s too hard, and it’s a low-percentage game. People have routines that are tough to break. So we’ve decided to try to understand people’s existing lifeflow, and find ways to make it healthier.
So how did I get from point A to point B? I found some inspiration to get fitness into my lifeflow. And not surprisingly, that inspiration came from my social network – the people I know. It didn’t happen all at once, either. It was more like a series of dominos falling.
Work Integration:
I’m luckier than most folks in that I work in an environment that encourages fitness. We have a walkstation on our floor, and do all kinds of funky things to track our fitness with pedometers (Chris Brogan wrote about our virtual fishtank here – I’m the rather unassuming little blue fish. Click the fish to see our names). I’m able to do most of my conference calls while walking on a treadmill – and that helps. One of our employees, Jean Nelson, managed to walk up to 30,000 steps per day on the walkstation, which is incredible.
Life Integration:
My friend Laura Tabler recently built fitness into her lifeflow by making one small change. Rather than sitting on the couch at night feeding her love for reality television, she walked on a treadmill while she watched. With that one change, Laura lost a whole bunch of weight (she reached her goal about twice as fast as she’d planned). She also blogged (brilliantly) the experience here, here and here. Since I see Laura every day (and edit this blog), it was impossible not to be inspired by what she’d learned and accomplished.
Support at Home:
While studies have shown that spouses typically are not major influences on health behaviors, I think that mine is the exception. Five years ago, my wife recommitted herself to her health, and has been an amazing role model. She’s never nagged me about my health, but she definitely understands what I’m going through. And that makes a big difference in my ability to stick to a plan – which I’m not normally inclined to do.
Do what you can do:
The capper for me happened over the summer. I was on a family vacation, and I usually feel like a lazy slob because my dad, brothers, uncle, and cousins all wake up early and run on the beach. I usually wake up late and eat pancakes. This summer, my cousin’s wife started going along with them, and doing interval training. She told me that her first week consisted of running for a minute, then walking for 30 seconds (or something like that) and repeating it several times. For some reason that struck a chord with me. ANYBODY can run for a minute at a time, right?
When I got home from my vacation, I did a little googling, and found the Couch to 5k Training Plan from coolrunning.com and registered for the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure 5k. The training plan was just as easy as I’d hoped it would be. Unlike other running experiences, it didn’t take weeks for me to feel good after running. Because I started with such an easy set of intervals (week one: run for 60 seconds and walk for 90), I felt great after my very first session – and have on every session since. And I’ve found some tools and resources that have helped me stay on track (which I’ll save for a later post).
Have you ever tried to build health into your lifeflow, rather than making radical changes? What did you do? How did it work? I’d love to know – I can always use a new source of inspiration!
Photo by DaveAustria
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It’s cold, it’s early and your alarm is going off. You dutifully climb out of bed, pull on your warmest pair of running tights and layers of wicking tops, and search — hopefully not in vain — for that pair of gloves with the snot strip, which you’ve grown to appreciate far more than you’d like to admit. You lace up your sneakers, grab your keys, and head out to meet the random assortment of people who will soon know more about you than most of your “conventional” friends.
Continuing our series on children’s health, let’s examine the quality of airline air and air safety for traveling children. Per .jpg)
With very little fortitude to wait for…anything, I often lose my patience with anyone who doesn’t match my lightning speed. Just ask my coworkers…or my fiancé…or, well, you get it. And being 32 means that I don’t have enough life experience behind me to personally relate to the wisdom and challenges that come with achieving 60 or 70 or 80 years of life. 