This morning I headed out for a great paddle out on the river.
It was another spectacular autumn morning out on the river, a bit chilly and breezy, but otherwise lovely.
My plan for this afternoon was to head out for a bit of a jog, but instead I have taken the chance to apply some wisdom.
The wisdom is in the area of moderation. As I said yesterday, while Dr Stobie has continued his advice to me about not racing, he did give me some more clarity on the training I can do. After his advice on just what sort of training I can do, the temptation is to rush out and do just that.
However, I know from my experience last week that if I rush out and try and exercise as much as possible today and tomorrow, then by Thursday I will be all done and need to take a break. This week my goal is to try and pace my exercise a bit smarter across the week. As such I have given jogging a miss today in the hope that I might be up to doing a jog on Thursday. I am hoping that if I am a bit smarter with how I do my exercise I will be able to do increase my running slightly over last week while still staying within my physical limits. If this week goes well then that will give me a better idea of my capacity, after which I might try and run on both Tuesday and Thursday.
My aim with the above isn't to try and get fit as possible for racing or anything but rather to simply fit in the exercise that I enjoy while staying within my physical capacity. However, as you may be able to tell from the above paragraph, I am struggling to transition from serious training to recreational exercise. Even rereading the above I get a bit of a twinge that I might be overdoing things. When I think of exercise, I think of it in a very specific way, which tends to err towards having a strict exercise program that crams in as much as possible.
My attempt to practice a bit of wisdom today is about trying to control that tendency to try and do as much exercise as possible. Reminding myself that I am not on a time line, there is no race to prepare for, if I want to take some time to figure out just what sort of exercise regime works for me and is safely sustainable, then that is fine. In fact it is the wise thing to do. That isn't to say that I won't be able to jog both Tuesday and Thursday next week, but rather it is an acknowledgement that I need to progress to that point slowly and carefully, listening to my body the entire way and giving it ample opportunity to let me know I am pushing too far.
Slow and steady keeps you alive.
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