Written by Once a routine is established, keeping it often seems easy. Getting to the point of creating the routine is often the hardest part – or, sometimes it’s just getting started. For me, setting goals has been the key to establishing a routine, but sometimes the goal isn’t always clear and establishing the routine can be somewhat challenging. Sometimes, taking even the first step can be challenging without the goal in mind.
A long-time runner, I started running in earnest in my thirties. My routine really started after giving birth to my second child. The motivation was simple – I wanted to lose weight. I borrowed my sister-in-law’s baby jogger and would push that jogger around the streets of our neighborhood with my sweet son in tow pretty much daily. I’d run on and off in my late teens and twenties, but this was the first time I’d been this committed to running on a regular basis. Yes, I was motivated by vanity. Oddly enough, once I started getting back into shape – i.e. achieving the goals of my vanity – getting out on a consistent basis was a struggle. Around this time, I was in a book club and three of the women in the book club had signed up to complete a 1/2 Ironman as a relay team. As luck would have it, the woman who was to run the 1/2 marathon leg of the race was pregnant and would be 7 months pregnant at the time of the race. I offered to be her backup should she want to drop out and she agreed. Not long after that agreement, she decided not to run the race, and I had a new goal for running beyond vanity – I was going to complete my first 1/2 marathon. Thus began my passion for running.
In the last year, I set myself a sizable goal with the Portland to Portland cycling trip across the country. Attempting to cycle 3800 miles in 47 days requires a significant level of fitness that found me training on average two to three hours per day. It became a part-time job. During my training, I split my time between cycling, swimming, running and strength training. Upon completion of the feat, I took a break and have recently decided to find my way back to a committed routine. This time, however, without a clear goal in mind.
For me, a clear goal has always been a race or endurance event of some kind. The cheap side of me says that if I have paid for it, then perhaps I’d best make sure I can complete it with some degree of capability and not struggle my way through. This time, however, I don’t have any such goal of that nature in sight. I view that as a positive because as I ponder on the goal – I realize that the goal is me. I am the goal.
I’ve been reading ‘Outlive’ by Dr. Peter Attia and about Medicine 3.0. What has fascinated me most about this book has been the idea of health span versus lifespan. Most of us strive to live a long life, but how many of us really focus or give time to what we want that life to look like. Dr. Attia has defined the Centenarian Decathlon – a framework for setting personalized fitness goals for peak function for the latest years of your life. The idea is to train for independence in order to achieve a high quality of life. This, to me, is the worthiest and most valuable of goals. It is a goal that spans across time and becomes part of your daily existence, rather than other goals that come and go. This is a goal that one can layer on additional individual experience related goals over time. I’d known this idea was important to me for some time but wasn’t able to put it into a simple framework for execution that allows me to commit myself to my routine and healthy lifestyle as I would a race.
But how to start when the motivation isn’t there? It’s not a lack of motivation per se, but I was having difficulty with one particular aspect of my commitment to fitness. Actually, two. The first was putting one foot in front of the other and running again, and the second starting swimming again.
This past weekend, I was able to overcome the running challenge I’d faced. It seemed so odd to me to struggle with starting to run again given the passion I’d held for it earlier in life. I was able to overcome this not just once – but twice in the last three days. If I had to put my finger on what it was that allowed me to overcome this resistance, it was nothing more than simply lacing up my shoes and committing to myself that I would run for 30 minutes and no more. I did so on the treadmill at home because it made it easy to avoid any reasons for not being able to do it. I didn’t have to drive anywhere. I didn’t have to go outside to run. I could simply get dressed and lace up my shoes and place my phone on the holder on the treadmill and watch my first episode of Pluribus (to which I’m wildly addicted – I blame the run). I did exactly that. I started slowly and then picked up the pace ever so slightly. It was painfully slow, but it was a run and I completed the full thirty minutes. What’s even more amazing to me, is that I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it so much that I laced up the next day and completed forty minutes.
I rediscovered that I do enjoy the feeling and, I believe, I will enjoy it even more now that I think about it as something that I do purely for me and for the love of the feeling. I did the same with cycling outside yesterday. I had been struggling to get on my beautiful new bike and get outside to bike. The day before yesterday, a group ride invite had popped up in my Strava app for a 51-mile ride with the Violet Crown cycling group. I’d ridden with them once before and enjoyed it. I reached out to a few friends who I know ride with them in hopes that at least one, or maybe even all of them, would also be riding. One did raise his hand as being committed to the ride. I pulled my things together on Saturday night and so I was ready to head to the ride start on Sunday morning. The ride had been advertised as ‘conversational’, so the 51-mile distance didn’t intimidate me. I did find the ride a little faster than what I’d expected, but I managed to – mostly – stay with the group and found myself hanging off the back like a tail now and then. That said, I did complete the entire ride and enjoyed it immensely.
I’m two for two in getting back into the swing of things this week now that the holidays are over. I still need to get back into the pool and also get back on the pickle ball courts. The latter is happening this morning in spite of the 46-degree Fahrenheit temperature and wind advisory. I’ll get out there but am not sure how pickle balls will fare in the 20-30 mile per hour wind gusts.
No matter what, I am back in the game and because I set a goal that is timeless – me. Sometimes it is as easy as putting one foot in front of the other and starting small so you can at least get started.