Friday, December 21, 2012

#Reverb12 Day 19: Nourish

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 19: How did you nourish yourself?

How did you nourish your beautiful body in 2012?

What self-care practices will you take with you into 2013?

2012 was the year of everyday fitness for me. 

Besides maintaining my usual weekly routine of doing boot camp three weekday mornings and running with my friends three mornings, I managed to add in some yoga challenges.  The yoga was great for me.  In the middle of a 30 day challenge was when I felt like it was all coming together.  I would feel relaxed, destressed, thinner, bendier, more focused, more efficient, happier, etc.  If only there were more hours in the day!  I did two 30 day challenges in 2012 (January and August) and by the end of each, my husband was quite unhappy with the fact that we were barely seeing each other.  I also did a month of Bikram where I attempted to use more moderation and only go to a few classes a week, but that also didn't work as well -- you don't get the full benefit, and it was a lot of money to spend for not as much time. 

But I think the bigger difference in how I nourished my body in 2012 was the small everyday changes that I made. 

Based on a New Year's resolution, I started taking the stairs most days at work -- to my 5th floor office until mid-November, and then to my 9th floor office for the rest of the year (but for the last couple weeks, I've actually started the climb on 2 instead of 1 due to locked stairwells).  It hasn't been easy, but I'm proud of myself for sticking with it, particularly in the new and higher office.  It's just a few minutes of my day, one big climb, but I know it's good for me, and within 5 minutes of finishing, I'm back to breathing and feeling normally, so there's no reason not to do it. 

The other big development from 2012 in my everyday fitness is more recent, it also started after the mid-November move to a new office.  I've started commuting to work on foot at least a couple times per week.  I always have to drive to work on Monday mornings, because I work from home on Fridays and have to bring back my laptop, plus clothes and lunches for the week.  But for the last month or so, I decide when I'll next need my car, and run to and from work until then. 

It was funny, one night this past week we were getting ready for our annual drive (with hot chocolate) with our neighbors to look at pretty holiday lights.  I ran home from work as usual, got home around 7:30, and quickly ate dinner.  It was a gorgeous night, probably upper 60s or low 70s, freakishly warm for this time of year.  So I called our neighbors to tell them to bring coats, since we'd go see the lights in my car with the top down, in which case it might get a little chilly.  So I made the hot cocoas, carried them downstairs and got into the garage.  Surprise!  No car!  I'd driven to work and left it there for a few days, not realizing I'd want it.  Oops.  While hubby's car isn't a convertible, it seats 4 more comfortably than my car does, and it worked just fine. 

Anyway, my commute time seems pretty steady.  My fastest commute is on the way home, slightly downhill, and my personal record was this week, about 29 minutes, counting traffic lights.  My slowest commute is on the way to work, and the longest it's ever taken is about 35 minutes, counting traffic lights.  There have been a few commutes where I've struggled -- either tired from an earlier workout that day, having eaten too recently, just not in the mood, whatever.  And there have been a couple where the conditions weren't great -- in Texas, it's tough to wear the same thing for commutes that are 12 hours apart when the temperature sometimes varies by 30 or so degrees, and I've also been threatened by storms, traffic, whatever.  But overall, I love killing two birds with one stone -- commuting and working out.  And I love that I'm not driving and polluting or stressing about traffic, and that I'm becoming known (to the extent I wasn't already) as that crazy runner at work. 

I'm not entirely sure about either of these "everyday fitness" moves for 2013. 

The stairs were a New Year's resolution, so it might end on Jan. 2.  Not sure.

The running commute will likely last at least until late February, but then I'll have to see what my speed training schedule looks like until May, and then how it will fit into marathon training.  The bottom line is that I want to get back to running with my buddies regularly, and I don't want my mileage to be higher than it should be. 

We will see! 

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