This morning my partner and I took off to visit her family in St. Louis. It is going to take us about two days to drive there, then we are spending three days in STL, and then two days driving back. This is going to be the first real challenge for our workout and health routine. Travel and time away from our kitchen is not ideal for maintaining a consistent health practice, but that is life… things are never going to be perfect and we need to be able to thrive in imperfection.
So far, my biggest concerns are staying consistent with my push-ups, pull-ups (we brought our pull-up bar), and planks. I already struggle with motivation to do those daily and sitting in a car most of the day is not going to help with that. I imagine this is also going to really effect my body’s metabolism because it is used to getting up and going for pretty decent walks 3-4 times per day, in addition to any running we do in the morning. I’m not really going to be too embarrassed or anything to do push-ups at rest stops, any discomfort I had for that type of thing has disappeared due to the bike ride… we spent a lot of morning brushing our teeth and having meals in public, I’m just going to lack motivation. Maybe I can try and shoot for some sort of maintenance exercise instead of my normal routine.
We did shift our running schedule around to be more flexible. Our two rest days each week are now during our driving days, and I’m optimistic that we will keep each other motivated to get up and run while in St. Louis. Our diet is also a small concern… we aren’t going to be nearly as strict as we’ve been for the last three weeks but we are going to eat and drink in moderation. We agreed to confront each other directly if we try to order a second drink on any given night and when we go out to eat we are going to have salads for appetizers and probably share a entree to keep the portions in size with what our bodies are used to. My best case scenario is we don’t lose any ground on our fitness, but I imagine that we will have taken a step or two backwards by the end of the weekend.
That’s okay though. Life is about living and not just preparing for the future. Even if I stumble completely and gorge myself on 3,000 calories of beer and pizza and don’t exercise one day I won’t be mad at myself. All I can do is dust myself off and keep moving forward… and record my progress and measurements for the world to see.
Wandering Oak 