Sunday, November 7, 2010

Decisions, decisions... to exercise, or take a second rest day? (v2 of the post)

Image courtesy of the Stock Exchange
OK, so here's my quandary.

It's Sunday - the last day of my week. I've been pretty good exercise AND eating-wise this week.  I treated myself foodwise yesterday, but it was planned, so that's all good.

I've had one full rest day (Thursday) so far this week, which is on track for my planned "always at least 1 each week, and ideally no more than 3" aim. I've already hit my distance 40km goal for the week (43km as of yesterday's walk).  I'm within a hair's breadth of my goal total calorie burn (2,463 of a target 2,500).

The numbers for the week are basically good already, but I have a run planned today - W2.2D2 of the B210k programme.  And I'm not quite sure if I want to do it, or whether I'd be more "in balance" for the week if I just gave in to the little voice inside that actually, y'know, it would kinda like to be lazy today and sit on the couch ripping absolute shreds out of the plot and character inconsistencies in CSI Miami for a few hours instead.


This is actually version 2 of this post.  See, in the first one that wrote earlier this morning, I concluded by the end of it that there was really no reason to NOT run today. I went through my thoughts - I'm not sore (or no sorer than I have been the past couple of weeks), that nothing was setting off injury alarms, and that all that was keeping me from going out was inertia.  I concluded that I should therefore get my butt out the door for the aforementioned run, on the basis that once I'm out there, I'll probably enjoy it.

Then I wembled off to get myself some breakfast in order to fuel said run. And gave myself an hour after eating it for it to digest. And y'know what? In that time, I managed to fall asleep again for a couple of hours (yeah. I didn't sleep too well last night). Which should really tell me something about what it is my body actually needs.  Yeah, my ego would like me to head out the door. But that's just my ego, and I don't have to listen to it.  For a start, it's been responsible for entirely too many overdoing-it injuries in the past, which makes it an advisor of dubious credibility.

Meh. I'm leaning more towards the lazy option today.  I'll see how I feel with the rest of the afternoon - I might decide I want to pop in one of the Jillian DVDs that arrived on Thursday that I haven't had a chance to try out yet. Or I might not.  I think, right now, I'm just revelling in having the choice.

Which makes me curious about how other people handle wiffling and situation-by-situation choices. Do you do better long term if you give yourself the choice on a day-by-day basis about what you actually feel up to on that given day?  Or do you find the only way to move forward to your goals is to decide what you'll do in advance, when, and then stick to your schedule come hell or high-water?

5 comments:

orannia said...

I hope whatever you decided to do today kechara you enjoyed it :)

I need to have a schedule...I do way, way better on a schedule. I'm so not a fly by the seat of my pants gal *grin*

Sweet dreams tonight!

Kirsten said...

i think you make a plan and then you find the grace and forgiveness to embrace whatever follows.

peace and blessings - kirsten

Starfire said...

@Orannia - I have to admit, I like *making up* schedules and planning them out. I'm just not always so good at putting them into practice once I have. Thanks for the wishes!

@RNT Girl - that definitely sounds like the balanced way to do it. I like the way you describe "embracing" what follows - I think that's something I could do with doing more of in my life :-)

Traveller said...

I love to make plans. Executing them is another thing altogether.

I do best once something is part of my routine. Then, inertia works for you.

Starfire said...

@Traveller - oh, I'm so with you on the making plans. I can remember back at high school, I'd spend *hours* making up colour-coded study timetables in the weeks before exams... and then end up totally ignoring said plans the moment the first day of the study break rolled around.

And yeah, I hear you on the inertia thing. I used to claim that the reason I exercised at 0-god-hundred-early in the morning was that a/ if I exercised first thing, nothing else would come up that would get in the way of my routine; and b/ if I rolled straight out of bed and into my gym clothes, I could be halfway to the gym before my brain realised what I was doing and tried to talk me back to bed...