My Journey With Health And Fitness – Pushing Myself

I was surprised when I got up yesterday that the temperature was only in the mid twenties which was way lower that it has been any other day while we have been here. I contemplated taking advantage of this and doing a run but decided I need to keep to my planned every other day schedule to avoid any strain injuries. It ended up being the wrong decision because today was a run day and it was really warm again this morning.

I have been so determined not to lose any momentum in my fitness while I am here. If you have followed my blog over the past year you know that when it comes to Mexico I tend to get lazy after a week or so and the exercising starts to become more sporadic. Not this time, the thought of skipping workouts hasn’t even entered my mind and I plan to keep it that way. Yes, I do have to get up early to get the workouts done by a reasonable time in the mornings but I am willing to continue to do that. Besides, getting up at 5am is sleeping in compared to when I am at home.

But, I have decided I can push myself while I am here. Firstly, I hate running in the heat and humidity. The humidity in particular makes it challenging for me to breath the same way. On top of that, by time I am done a 5 km run I am soaked in sweat and trust me when I say some days my clothes are completely saturated. Yet I am having one of my most successful trips in terms of how much running I am doing.

In order to test my limits I have also decided since I am doing shorter runs than normal that now would be a good time to work on my speed. Yes, I know I have been talking about this for the past 2 years but I am just feeling so invigorated because of all the work I have done that I feel I am in the right head space to really work on speed and take myself out of my workout comfort level. I know how I can do this and the goal is to see a real difference by time I get back home.

I have now set up my Fitbit for interval mode, 4 minutes at my usual pace then 1 minute of running hard. I know 1 minute seems like a short period of time but already the change is starting to happen. My first run down here I did 5 km in 53 minutes, today I did 6 km in 50 minutes. It is amazing how much faster my pace had become over just a few runs. After my next run on Thursday I am going to change up the intervals to 3.5 minutes regular pace and 1.5 minutes of running hard. I can’t wait to see the changes this will bring.

Why do I think I am going to have success this time? Simple, running here is already hard for me to do so adding on to it doesn’t make it that much harder. I figure if I can push those limits here I can do it at home. And really, all the work over the past 3 1/2 months have actually made my fitness level better than it has ever been and it is almost like I crave doing better.

Damn, apparently I am back to a mental state where I am thinking of my self as athletic.