Pondering Health and fitness

Dear James, Daniel and Emily

2 weeks ago (roughly) I developed a corneal ulcer. As I was sitting in the Emergency room I commented to my Dad (who was kind enough to be the one to take me so Kim could get kids ready for Mom to take to school) that I want to healthy and fit, but first I needed to focus on being healthy.

I know that the 2 concepts are linked. It is hard to be healthy without being fit. And even less likely to be fit but not healthy. But given my recent struggles with fitness and a bit of a rash of health issues this winter I have not been 100% healthy for any real long periods of time.

So that is a primary focus: get healthy. Which meant that the last 2 weeks I got as much sleep as my body could handle. And I only ran as far as I could handle without pushing it. And that means I am going to stop experimenting with some eating habits and try to get back to what I know works: eat smaller meals, exercise more.

I also decided to do 2 things as far as running. First, I decided to commit to at least running the Half on Labor Day. Which means setting up a training program that should get me ready for that. And then I went ahead and did my assessment workout so I will have a better idea what level I need to push myself to when I run the training programs. Because while I can ignore those little percentage numbers to some extent, it is still a little subconscious downer when I finish what I thought was a good workout and get that response that I only met 40% of my desired effort.

Which is another thing to ponder: effort. When I am honest with myself I realize that I haven't been putting 100% of effort into my health and fitness efforts lately. Part of that is health related (hard to really push myself when I haven't had enough sleep, stomach bothers me, eyes bother me etc.) Part of that is environment (weather, kids.) But what it really boils down to is I really need to get into a better mind set for pushing myself to run harder, eat less and better etc.