A little more than a year ago, I made a pretty big decision. I noticed that I would get up pretty early most mornings, but I didn’t really accomplish much.<\/p>\n
In the time I had before I had to shower ad get ready for work, I would usually watch TV or goof off on the Internet.<\/p>\n
Most times, I had good intentions of accomplishing something like doing some reading or writing, but I hardly ever followed through and pretty much just wasted my time until I had to get moving.<\/p>\n
Even though I am a fan of the sloth, I thought things needed to change. So I decided to start exercising because, well, I could stand to get in better shape.<\/p>\n
I started off by going for short walks. I knew I wouldn’t get back down to my fighting weight this way, but I thought I had to do something.<\/p>\n
At first, I thought walking would bore me, but I ended up really liking it. I bought an MP3 player and discovered different routes around downtown. Everything looked so different in the early morning light.
\nInstead of music, I usually listened to podcasts. I learned a lot about pop culture and sports during my walks. If you saw a guy laughing or nodding in agreement to no one in particular as he walked through downtown over the past year in the morning, that was probably me.<\/p>\n
I managed to keep going through the fall and winter. Since we had a pretty mild winter, I couldn’t use the weather as an excuse. Like I thought, the weight really didn’t come off since I was just walking, but I started to feel better. I could tell the difference when I missed a few days of walking.<\/p>\n
I used a pedometer to track my mileage and kept a running tally. Between my 39th and 40th birthday, I walked more than 200 miles. That’s not the most incredible number, but I’m glad I really stuck with something.<\/p>\n
The hard part was trying to decide what to do this year. Did I just see if I could top that number? Did I up the ante a little? Did I just pat myself on the back and go back to my lazy ways?<\/p>\n
For now, I have decided to switch the focus from walking to running. I have pretty bad knees and ankles from my wrestling days, but want to see how long I can stave off that pain.<\/p>\n
I have not had the greatest motivation at the start, but don’t want to give up right away. I know I can do it because I used to run all the time when I competed, but I also know how much I hate running so the temptation is to throw in the towel before I even get into the habit.<\/p>\n
The hardest part is that I lost my MP3 player about a month ago and have been too lazy and cheap to buy a new one. I’m a baby that way. Entertainment will play a tremendous role in whether I feel motivated to get the exercise I so badly need.<\/p>\n
So I guess I have to suck it up and go buy myself a new toy so I can feel like running in the morning. I hope I survive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A little more than a year ago, I made a pretty big decision. I noticed that I would get up pretty early most mornings, but I didn’t really accomplish much. In the time I had before I had to shower…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,88],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","category-exercise","wpcat-3-id","wpcat-88-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}