Recently, I’ve had a few people ask me how I manage to get family, work, volunteer work and exercise balanced…well to be honest, I can’t take the credit. A good friend of ours just published a book called, “Boardroom to Base Camp,” and in it, he has this exercise called: “The Balance Exercise.” It asks you take the hours in each week, subtract sleep and then divvy up the remaining hours to different things like: yourself, mission, spiritual, community etc. So when I was first completed the exercise it made me rethink how I approached each day because it clearly shows that we have a lot more time than we think. Just to give you an idea: I’m a work-at-home mom. That means I watch my son and also work about 8 – 10 hours each day; Monday – Sunday 😉 but not necessarily straight through.  Now I will admit that he does go to daycare one day per week so I can get out to meetings in and around the city, but that’s it. I also usually do a bit of volunteer work 3-4 times a week (sometimes more or less depending on what’s going on); I exercise 5-6 times a week ranging from 1-2.5 hours each time and on top of that, I make time to socialize with friends. I’m not saying a busy life is for everyone, but I am telling you that there’s a whole lot of time available to get this stuff done if you really want to!Â
Anyway, with that I want to tell you about my awesome workouts both yesterday and today – I think the fact that it’s been above zero (well above) has really turned my attitude around. Even despite having another nasty cold again (and it’s quite nasty) I managed to do 35 minutes on the treadmill and another 20 minutes on the bike today! And yesterday was terrific as well. I completed my hill work on the treadmill (which I’m normally against) However, I started out at an incline of 2 and every 1.5 minutes, I moved it up. I believe when I was finished I was somewhere past 11. And I kept my speed at a steady 6! I was absolutely sweating out my cold, and it felt amazing. I’m not sure if I could have pushed much harder, but I’m completely satisfied with both workouts.
In the spirit of encouragement when I know some people are also having a rough time getting out with the transition of seasons and sickness, read this quote. I hope it’s as effective with you as it was with me! 🙂 HAPPY TRAILS!