Saturday was the 100th day of the year.
And this is a year in which I've set more goals for myself than ever before. Lofty goals. Goals that include thousands of miles and tens of thousands of pages read. So, how am I doing?
Depends on which half of that 100 you examine.
The first half was pretty good. I'd run 187 miles by day 50 (February 19) and I'd read 2800 pages. The latter was spot-on pace, and the former was on the schedule that I'd set. Already, though, I'd started slipping on some other things, in particular that yoga that I kept raving about. As I dove into full-on rehearsals for one show and and performances for another, I was sleeping less and drinking more.
And the trend continued. In the next fifty days, I ran 103 miles and read 575 pages. The running still wasn't terrible, until you consider that only 15 of those miles were run after March 10. I was heading in the wrong direction, with no immediate relief in sight. I'm still in rehearsals (tech rehearsals at that) for one show, about to be in performance, after which I'll go directly back into performance for another.
So, a couple days ago, realizing we'd passed the 100-day mark for this year, I decided to take a look at buckling down just a little bit more. Spending less. Exercising more. Doing all those myriad things that I enjoy telling folks I do (and that have the added benefit of making me feel great).
Truth be told, I wasn't off to a great start.
Every day this week, I've overslept to varying degrees, but each enough to prohibit a run in the morning. This is likely due to the fact that each night but one, I've stayed up too late. Perhaps I'm not in a place right now to make a lifestyle change.
I can, however, make one good choice at a time. And today's good choice came after a fruitless trip to fix a computer in one of our offices. It hasn't been a great week in a lot of ways for me, and a last-minute schedule alteration always riles me up, so receiving that on my drive back to the office didn't help. Now I had a weird gap in my schedule with nowhere near enough time to accomplish anything.
Fortunately, I made a good choice this morning. I packed a running bag to throw in my trunk, just in case. I didn't wake up in time for a run, but maybe if I found some time, I could get a few miles in later.
And hey, I found some time.
I started out for 6.5 and quickly realized that I was going to max out at 5. That decision made, I examined how I was feeling, and the answer was, great. I felt strong and I knew I was making the smarter choice to run fewer miles. I smiled. And then a van turned into the parking lot a little ways ahead of me, driven by my friend Nathan, a former Sunday morning running partner. Not only did I get to feel this way, but I had a witness to the feeling. A fellow runner, no less.
And I wasn't done. Around the corner, just about the time that the sun was starting to bother me, I passed Beau, also in his car, another runner with whom I'd trained, this time on Wednesday nights at Luke's Locker, and this guy does ultras. Two former running partners on one 5-mile run in a month of inadequate training. I'm sure that's a sign of something, and they were both smiling, so I think it's a sign of something good.
Does this mean I'll definitely wake up on time tomorrow and go for a run? Of course not. I hope I do, but you never know. With too much going on, sometimes you can't make all the right choices.
But at this point, I'll settle for 50/50.
