#Reverb12 Day 26: Making Time

For the month of December, I'm working on doing the daily series of Reverb prompts to help me reflect on the prior year and hope/plan for the upcoming year. If you're interested, join in; I found this to be a very useful exercise when I did it two years ago.

#reverb12 Day 26: How will you make time?

How do you intend to carve out more time for the things that are the most important to you in 2013?

The big step for me was actually taken in November 2012, changing my 4 mile drive to and from work into a 4 mile run.  That takes more time of course, but it's like multi-tasking.  Commuting and a workout at the same time.

Running a marathon PR is going to be my number one goal for 2013, and 20ish miles per week of commuting, even if I run easy and slow, will help me I believe. 

I signed up today for what I hope is going to be an awesome speed running class.  It starts in late February, so I am going to run with a group of buddies training for Boston until then -- starting on Sunday! 

Carving out time for that will be easy, the time is already there.  The plan starting next week will be to wake up as usual at 5 on M/W/F and go to boot camp, then on Wednesdays, I'll go home for breakfast and then run to work.  And I'll start waking up at 4:40 on Tu/Th to go run with my friends, then come home for breakfast, then an easy solo run to work.  And on Sundays I'll run long with my buddies, but I may have to turn around early since I won't want to go higher than about 13 miles. 

There's pretty much no other demand on my time at 4:40 in the morning, so making the time will be easy.  I just need to go to bed early, and that tends to be easy for me after a week or so of being exhausted from getting up early. 

There were a couple years I tried to run after work and it just didn't work for me.  There were too many days I'd make excuses, either I had to work late and then was exhausted, or working out didn't fly based on when I'd eaten or how hungry I was, or it was too dark to feel safe going solo, or there was some social obligation I wanted to prioritize, you get the picture.  I don't consider myself a morning person, but having friends to meet makes me get up without thinking twice, and next thing I know, I'm off and running. 

(I wrote this post yesterday, reading it today before posting, I realize I should clarify that of course I'd say my relationship with my husband is most important to me in 2013, but running in the morning works well for us -- he goes to work early, so it helps that I go to bed early with him.  And not doing yoga quite as often will help too, he hates when I do yoga at night and we barely see each other as a result.)