Greg's Running Blog

Since I have started my transformation project I have been pretty diligent with my daily cardio workout. There have actually only been 10 days out of the last 85 when I didn’t do any cardio workout, either walking, cycling or mostly elliptical. 4 happened over the Christmas holiday and two happened during Thanksgiving. It’s hard to blame me for not feeling too motivated with all the “festive eating” that went around while I stuck with my diet. For the other 4 days I have no excuses, I just didn’t feel like it. But today was different.

Today was a scheduled rest day. I have started running a bit over a week ago and after I almost killed myself over the weekend by doing it too strenuously I have decided I needed a plan. I’m always a man with a plan. So I started researching different running plans and looked at a whole lot of them. There were two things that they all had in common. 1) They all said you should get clearance from a doctor to run and 2) you should always have a rest day or two to recover during the week.

Today was supposed to be my rest day. It feels really weird not to do anything for a change and to do it on purpose. I still feel bad about it even though I know my legs need the rest so they will be in top shape for my scheduled 6 mile run on Saturday. Without exercise during lunch I just didn’t know what to do with myself. So I went golfing. I have checked my golf GPS and the last score card was recorded on 10/18/09. I haven’t played golf for over 3 months now. I started golf last year around May when a co-worker took me to the range once. At first I thought it was the stupidest idea ever but once I got started I could hardly stop. I have played pretty religiously over the summer, walked 9 holes on Wednesdays after work and walked 18 on every other weekend. You could say that was the beginning of the end of my sedentary lifestyle I just didn’t switch it into full gear until last October.

Ironically the same time I switched my transformation into full gear was the same time I played golf last. I just couldn’t find the time to get away and be out there for 4 hours any more. Daylight savings dropped off which made after work golf disappear from my schedule and family obligations and the weather killed my weekend play. My partner had a baby so he’s been out of commission since October and he’s just starting back up again as well.

Since I had nothing better to do at lunch I went to the range, got a bucket of balls and started whacking at them. I can’t really say that my weight loss made me any better. I actually sucked pretty bad. Most of my balls kept going to the right either straight or full slices. I definitely lost it over the last 3 months. I will need to re-learn everything again if I want to have any chance at playing 18 again with two sleeves of balls and hitting under 120. Regardless of my sucking I had a lot of fun today and I’m really glad I went. Since tomorrow is cross-train day I’ll do elliptical in the evening which leaves my lunch open again. I think I’ll go and visit the range tomorrow too. I certainly need the practice. So while today was supposedly a rest day I still ended up going outside and doing something mildly physical.