I’m back, baby

I went to Riverwalk for a walk during my break today, as I’ve been trying to get in the habit of doing. I’ve been going there intermittently just to look around, but since I got serious with my exercise habits I’ve been trying to do more. Today, for the first time, I tried jogging. Also for the first time, I went around twice.

My first lap, I jogged as much as I could, striding briskly in between. I used my iPhone’s stopwatch to see how I did: 19:26.9.

For the second lap, I was quite winded, so I resolved to walk it and see how long that took. While striding along, I held my arms straight out, then straight up; then I did curls up and out to the side; then I did some punches. I was trying to simultaneously stay focused and give my arms a workout. It worked! The stopwatch says my walking time was 22:16.8.

Obviously I have a long way to go to improve my jogging. I’ve never been much of a runner. I always got a stitch in my side, even when I was at my best physical condition–back during the kung fu years. Today that didn’t happen, but I did get pretty winded after what I consider brief periods of jogging.

But the point is I tried, and now I have a time I can work on beating.

I headed back to work feeling almost giddy. Working out hard like that is such a good feeling. I need to always hold on to that fact so I will keep doing it.

As I hung my sweat-soaked clothes on the back of the door to dry, I remembered: I used to do this. I used to get all sweaty at lunch and hang up my clothes afterwards. Back when I first started working here, I was in total explore-mode and would walk all around the area. After awhile I got out of the habit, and then I always felt that it would be so inconvenient to bring workout clothes every day, and get sweaty and then have to keep working with no time for a shower.

I don’t feel that way anymore. I’ve been bringing workout clothes every day for weeks now, whether I actually use them or not. It’s become a habit. And today’s rush of good feeling proved to me that being sweaty is hardly worth worrying about.

I think I’ve finally purged some pretty self-destructive habits, and built some constructive ones. :)