I'm still giving serious thought to combining my two blogs, but until I can decide which URL will be the winner and whatnot, I'm just going to keep blogging about. Just keep an eye out, okay?
Helen expressed some disbelief in the idea of me running. There is a reason for this. If you do not know me personally, let's say that I do not mix well with athletics. My normal walk is more of a shuffle with my feet pointing outwards. My husband (accurately) says that you can here me coming from across the house as my feet drag along the floor. My mom says it looks like I'm continuously daydreaming since I appear to walk without purpose or aim. My feet are all kinds of screwed up as my mom decided to ignore my doctor's advice when I was younger for corrective shoes. And this is just my feet and walk.
My friends have described my running as distinctly "hilarious", "wow", "odd", and "duck like". I probably couldn't beat a tortoise in a foot race. I've never participated in foot races. I prefer reading.
So, why running? Because, much like I find my artistic drawing skills laughable, yet have always wanted to be able to draw, I want to be some kind of athlete. Me, the kid always picked last! And while I'd much prefer to be a cyclist, my mom gave me free sneakers while a bike costs several hundred dollars. As we can see, one is definitely cheaper than the other.
So, last night I ran, and today I did a pilates workout and I'm hoping to continue with running and yoga next week. I'm really hoping to turn my body around to be a little more fit. Has anyone here ever pulled anything like that off? What is your preferred way of getting in shape?
2 comments:
I am not much of a comment-leaver, but you know that I am a fitness instructor, right? And I have been for many of the last few years, though, obviously, all of my hospital time and repeat trips to the OR put my "job" on the back-burner for ... close to 2 years. Although my focus has been on Ashtanga yoga, I also teach kickboxing, sculpt (a group resistance training format), pilates (mat and with the swiss stability ball) and Zumba. Do not discount the Zumba. If you are interested in making fitness gains, but you also want to ENJOY yourself, please give Zumba a try. I'm not sure what the home DVDs are like these days - not as much fun as a class, I'd say, but still fun. Classes would require an ongoing investment, but they are easy to find, and if you can do a drop-in, you can scout around until you find an instructor or time/place you really like. Enthusiasm goes a long way toward making fitness a reality. They also have Zumba video games now for wii and xbox and what not, so that might appeal to your inner gamer-geek...There are many ways to get fit. None is immediate. The best way to get fit is to find what you enjoy, to make time for yourself to do it daily - and if you get bored, quickly find either something new or a variation to keep your interest. Also important to listen to your body to avoid injury - and accept small gains. As with so much of life, it's often 2 steps forward, 3 steps back. Nutrition plays an important role as well. But i could go on forever, so I say to you: Do what you love - Love what you do (thanks, Life Is Good), eat well, and rest well. I wrote a document a long time ago for bdha, explaining how to go about beginning running training and fitness. If I still have it, I'd be happy to share it with you...
Gloria: Awesome comment! All you Zumba tweets have made me super curious about it, but a Wii video game is probably much more my speed these days than actually leaving the house on a schedule. (Also, feel free to send bdha that doc again, since I think it might have fallen into the trash can of his brain, and his snoring is now waking *two* lovely ladies up.)
Jenn: I have a bike that your son finds quite interesting, that I would be happy to medium-term loan you. It might be a smidge big on you, but it's actually a smidge small for me, so... not as much as you might think. Not to push you away from running, if that's what you want to do, but as someone who was forced to give up her track star dreams in 4th grade by her orthopedic surgeon, I know that the bike is much less punishing on your joints. And I personally find bike riding very joyful, at least when I'm not dodging cars and/or other bikers.
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