Recalculating

One of my favorite commercials these days is the one where there’s a guy driving a car and he doesn’t follow the path the GPS voice (whose name is Mona in our house) tells him to. Mona then says, ”recalculating.”

That’s what I’ve been doing the last several months. I love running but I let it become too big of a part of my life, to the point that I wasn’t looking for work as hard as I should have. I was running my 20+ miles a week but neglecting this other thing to the point of making a mess of things. So I stopped running for about four months. Just stopped cold turkey. I wouldn’t let myself get out there and have this bit of relaxation because of my poor habits.

Note-- scale does not accurately reflect actual weight.

My weight went from 167 to its current level of 185. It’s a tiny bit harder to draw a deep breath, and my size 32-waisted jeans fit more snugly than they did last summer. It became time to do something about my problem.

In the meanwhile, Astro our new treadmill took up residence in our spare room last fall, next to the not-unpacked boxes from our move in four years ago. This means I had to start dealing with my problem. Can’t be having a big, expensive treadmill in the house unless you’re gonna get on there. Astro and I have gotten acquainted—I can set up routes in my old neighborhood in El Paso, Manhattan (The Little Apple), Tuscaloosa, here in Athens, or wherever I want. I bang out about ten miles a week with the elevation set at 1.0 so as to give my legs a little push. My mile times are closer to 9:00, but I expect that since I’m carrying extra weight.

It’s about an hour and a half each week, which jives with something I saw in a recent Runner’s World. It said that if you start running 1-2 hours a week you slash your risk of dying of cancer or a cardiovascular condition. The next page says 2 ½ hours a week will help you reap all of the youth-promoting benefits.

My whole mindset started with a magic number of 20 miles a week that I read years ago, so I’m adjusting my mindset again to allow myself the chance to run about 3 times a week, a little more than 30 minutes a shot, for a total of roughly 11 miles. I’m giving myself permission not to run. This allows me more time to network, write cover letters, and do the things I should have been doing before.

Who knows, maybe by clearing up the job situation, my running life will improve because I can run during the time I would’ve used job hunting. Or it could be that the reverse is true, that by running less I achieve more by having more energy throughout the day. We’ll find out.

Recalculating…