Motivation, where art thou?

I wish I understood motivation. I wish I understood where it went. I wish I understood how to generate it.

While chatting with a friend this morning about how long it’s been since I did any archery, I worked out that it was just over 9 months ago, in late September 2008. The same evening that I screwed up my arm.

Truth be told, the main reason I’ve not shot since then is fear of repeating that excruciating pain, and the long, slow physiotherapy process required to simply have a normal arm again. As mentioned in my New Year post, I think compound might be an option, and I’m planning on trying one out tomorrow. More to follow on this.

I then looked at the time I blogged about archery prior to that date and it was October 2007 — back when I was going to the gym 3 times a week, running 3 times a week, and doing archery 2 times a week. I was a calorie-burning and weight-loss machine, burning 3,000-4,000 calories a week on exercise alone, who was spending most of his spare time being active. I’d dropped from 118kg to 106kg and felt fantastic, culminating in the 5km Santa’s fun run.

Now 21 months on I’m worse off and heavier than I was back then, simply because I’ve lost the motivation to just get out there and do it. My running shoes are constantly calling out to me, my pushbike eyes me malevolently whenever I’m in the garage, and my bank statement proudly displays my wasted monthly gym payment, so I know I need to get back into the groove.

I know it’ll happen eventually — it’s how I’m wired. I just wish I knew why motivation ebbs and flows like this.

It’s life, gym…

Sunday and Monday were the days of DOMS. I felt it in a big way on Sunday, even having to adjust the way I got out of an armchair to appease my wailing muscles. No damage done, just simply a reaction to concentrated exercise again. It’ll be a thing of the past soon enough, so it’s all good.

Had an appallingly stressful day at work and to add insult to injury, a few miles from home a Volvo S40 though it would be a good idea to shunt me as I sat at a T-junction’s give-way sign waiting for a car to pass. It’s my 8th or 9th car accident in 20 years of driving and I’m still fortunate than none have been my fault (nor have I caused them!). Fortunately the damage seems to be minimal and we were both able to drive away without a problem.

Anyway, when I got home this evening I gave very serious thought to not going to the gym. I had excuses available: arranging the insurance claim, still mildly shaking (mild shock or adrenaline?), unsure whether the ache in my neck was there before or after the accident, and generally having had a crap day. I chose to go partly because I promised Tarkwin I’d be there, partly because I wanted to keep building up the attendance routine and partly because I figured a workout would melt the stress away.

So I met Tarkwin in the carpark, having had to dodge another lemming (two for two visits) who thought it’d be great to stand in the middle of the roadway and not move when I approached, and made our way into the still new and shiny gym. I chose my proper treadmill exercise this time, which meant I ran for the first time in ages — and it felt marvellous. The profile was walk/run, but it made me grin. I really do like to run, despite being overweight and with what my great-aunt calls a horseman’s physique: long torso and short legs. Personally, I think it’s a kind way of saying average height fat git with short legs, but that could just be me…

Next was the cross-trainer and bike, both of which were fine. I’m still taking it easy by dialling the time down to make it manageable. After that was the weights, which I did as stipulated with the exception of those on the dip/pullup machine.

Overall it was an enjoyably tiring workout, and it completely did the trick with my stress levels. Walking into the gym I was stressed, tense and grumpy, but walking out I was calm, relaxed and peaceful. It’s an alternative to a martial art, I suppose…

New Year and all that…

It’s with the usual sense of shock that I realise I haven’t updated this blog in some time. It’s not entirely surprising as since my last post I’ve only made it to the gym 2-3 times, walked 3-4 times, and have done no running or cycling. Some of this has been due to a new business venture I’m putting together, which has been consuming all my recreational time, including my exercise time, but essentially it’s poor time management and some misplaced priorities. What’s worse is that I’ve put even more weight on: I’m back over 120kg. In all, it’s abysmal.

Conversely, Tarkwin has been making great strides in his physical health plan. He’s almost down to my minimum from last year and is looking worlds better for it. People may seem — or say they are — happy when fat and overweight, but the physical, emotional and hormonal benefits of slimming down are undeniable. You don’t have to be the ridiculous “ideal weight” than the BMI fantasy encourages, but somewhere in the broader Overweight category is worlds better than Obese (or higher).

With my return to work this week, after a lovely break over Christmas and the New Year (happy new year, all!), I plan to resume my exercising. As might be expected, already there has been a speedbump in that plan as yesterday I managed to hurt my lower back whilst carrying stuff downstairs into the garage and slipping on the icy steps. Not ideal, but I know it’s just a speedbump. I’ll be careful with it and start out easy.

My shoulder is still not completely healed, as evidenced whenever I happen to sneeze. It’s making me think that I may never be able to resume recurve or traditional archery. I might be able to do compound archery (referred to as The Dark Side because it’s as far from conventional archery as it’s possible to be), but even that’s not certain right now. Besides, I feel that I need to regain my core strength and basic core fitness before I consider it.

Fortunately (for me) it’s the middle of winter, so nobody in their right mind is riding a motorcycle with any regularity. While this means my riding skills are going rusty (I find that even a week without driving a car makes my driving feel uncoordinated for a short time), it does mean I’m not tempted to try out a ride on the bike. The sore back also puts paid to this for now. I suspect I’ll need to think about a more upright bike soon enough, especially if the shoulder continues as it has. The original plan was for a touring bike anyway, so now maybe it’ll become a necessity. Still, we’ll see once the sun rediscovers the northern hemisphere.

I’ve also made the decision to completely give up fullbore target rifle. It’s not just because of the bad experience I had with my previous club, but also because the government and the MOD (as owners of the ranges most people shoot on) keeps adding more and more hurdles and requirements to clubs and members. As it’s not something I’m prepared to invest time in to become a competitive shooter, I may as well accept that it’s more effort than it’s worth and be shot of the increasingly wearisome responsibility of having a sniper rifle in my house. Increasing bureaucracy seems to be a sure-fire way of discouraging me from anything…

So there we have it. I’ve let myself go and am feeling physically and mentally bad for it (this is different from the “how could I have let this happen?” guilt/disgust, which also exists) and I’m full of good intentions and a plan to rectify it. Time to strap up my rustbucket of a body and rediscover my motivation.

Wish me luck!

Motivation

With much self-disgust, I realised yesterday that I’ve not done any exercise – other than occasionally walking at lunchtime when the sun’s out – since I got back from the US. The first week was down to jet-lag – I was completely screwed up by it. Since then it’s just been habit and motivation – I need to rediscover it and work at doing the 4-6 activities per week again.

Motivation is such a bizarre thing. When you have it, it’s no big deal and you just do everything you want whenever you want. When you don’t have it, it seems like such a big deal. Oh well… I’ll get my act together soon enough.

Hiatus

I’m heading to San Francisco on Friday, and I’m not sure if I’ll get an opportunity to run or if the hotel’s gym will be free. So this fitness malarky may be put on hold until at least 4th May.

No running or gym today; exercise schedule

As I’m still getting over my stomach’s most recent flare-up, I’m taking today off from exercise as well.

In response to Bluhorseshu’s request, I thought I’d provide my current exercise schedule:

           Morning         Evening
Tuesday    Run (30 mins)   Gym
Thursday   Run (30 mins)   Gym
Saturday   Gym
Sunday     Run (long)

As you can see, there are a lot of gaps in it. The main reasons for this are that I’m not a full-time exercise monster (nor do I want to be), I need to give myself rests between exercises, and I do other things in there that I don’t necessarily categorise into this fitness regime. I’ve mentioned a couple of them before, most notably archery and shooting.

However, once the weather clears up I am intending to make use of my relatively recently acquired mountain bike, and may even use it daily or every second day. I’ve always enjoyed bike riding as it’s a great way to explore a greater area of where you live, and surrounding areas. As a kid growing up in a rough town, my bike allowed me to travel through and explore parts of the town that I wouldn’t have felt safe doing while walking.

One of my concerns since moving to this country – especially living on the edge of civilisation as I prefer to do – is road safety while heading towards more bike-friendly areas. Particularly as most roads in my area are barely wide enough for 2 cars, never mind adding room for a cyclist, and the roads seem to be filled with homicidal nutbags who have to be somewhere – anywhere – 3 seconds faster than a cyclist may otherwise allow them to arrive. Still, I’m sure that’s something I’ll come to terms with the more time I spend out on the bike. I’m not averse to giving a expensive, pretty Chelsea Tractor fender or door a firm kick if my life has been needlessly risked…

No Thursday run

I had hoped to get out for a run this morning, but I slept through my alarm just long enough to stop me running but allow me to get to work on time. Not happy.

No gym this week, no Tuesday run

It’s never good when work life encroaches upon home life.

This week we have a number of VIPs from our company’s HQ in Silicon Valley visiting, which includes 3 solid days of meetings and a compulsory dinner on Monday evening, at the excellent The Ferry in Cookham. While the dinner was very nice, it was quite a lot of food and I got home to bed well after midnight. This meant no run this morning.

I’ll not be going to the gym this week, either, but it’s for a different reason. I have a meeting to attend next Monday evening that requires me to memorise and to recite a lot of text. So, although missing still more of the gym will grate on me (seriously), I think the time is better spent on learning. Fortunately that’s only four times per year.

We’ll see how the progress goes by the weekend, and will see about a gym visit and a run then.

Quiet, lazy weekend

As it’s my birthday weekend, I won’t be doing anything this weekend that remotely resembles exercise or exertion. Because I can…

No running or gym this week

There has been no running or gym at all this week. Not because I haven’t wanted to, but because I have the privilege of being the person on the much-hated on-call duties week (providing 24-hour assistance on the weekend and out-of-hours). While I technically could run – as our SLAs give me 30 minutes from the alert coming in to calling the customer – I didn’t want to run with my phone or get back without enough time to stretch and shower before possibly spending the next 4 hours on the phone and at my desk. Needless to say, the gym was definitely out of the question.

It’s just gone 8am on Sunday morning and I’ve just spent the last 90mins dealing with an emergency for a customer in Peru. Normally I’d be just getting up to do my Sunday run.

Only when I’m on-call does the thought of the weekend seem a bad thing. Oh well – bring on 9am tomorrow! That’s when I handover on-call duties to the next poor soul…