For me, there has always been a direct link between my levels of self-satisfaction and how productive or self-controlled I feel I’ve been. But the trouble is, I lack self-control and I’m quite often lazy and unproductive.
I work in software development, and so I spend most of my day sitting on my backside - more and more I feel that I need to be careful or my sedentary lifestyle will cause me health issues in future. So I feel I need a goal to work towards that will help me to be healthier and fitter while giving me a sense of achievement. I’m also going snowboarding in March and as it stands I would be worried about keeping up with the people I’m going with.
When it comes to goal setting, I like to break bigger goals into smaller, more manageable ones and I usually tend to look for logical milestones or dates that I know I will find it easy to track from or work towards. But it can also be easy to use the tendency to start with certain dates as a reason to procrastinate or allow myself not to do what I know I should (‘I’ll go for a run tomorrow’ or ‘I’ll go to that spin class next week when I know I’ll be able to attend more than one’).
Clearly a lot of people also have the same sort of habits, hence the cliche of ‘New Year’s Resolutions’!
Making new year’s resolutions is not something I particularly advocate or have found to be useful in the past, but recently I’ve been lazy and have gotten well out of shape, so 2017 rolling around has given me a good chance to set a new logical goal that would help me to work towards feeling better and more satisfied.
I must truly be a ‘Millennial’ since I always fall for the concept of gamification when doing anything that takes effort (e.g. developer training courses on Pluralsight, tracking running or cycling on Strava etc), and I know that in order to be successful, I will need a way to measure how I’ve been doing and at a glance, know how much work I’ve got left to do.
So with all this in mind, I’ve decided that I’ll run at least ten miles a week on average this year, with the overall goal of running 500 miles. And I signed up for Strava Premium. Some may scoff at this goal, but as a working dad with very little spare time I thought this would be a sensible start since I’ve failed on unattainable goals in the past.
I normally keep a private journal using the brilliant DayOne, but for this challenge I’ll also write about it on this blog. Even if nobody ever reads it, I’ve made a public record of my challenge so that it’ll be easier not to let myself off and just stay on the couch.
So it’s now January 2nd, day two of my challenge, and I’ve run six and a half miles so far. Nothing earth-shattering, but it’s a bright start.
When it comes to actively logging my progress; I’ve been a Strava member for a few years, and previously I used it mostly for tracking my cycling and commuting, but I hadn’t used it much recently because I stopped cycling to work when I moved house. It’s my go-to app for recording outdoor activities though, so there was only one choice for me when it comes to logging my running.
After rooting around on the Internet I couldn’t find any codes or discounts for Strava Premium (perhaps because of the time of year they don’t need to make any offers), having upgraded I can already see the benefits of it. I can set weekly or annual goals (both of which I’ll do), view my activities in a calendar view and crucially for me, I can also manually log treadmill running activities because I will do some of my distance in the gym during the week. My Strava profile is here.
The right soundtrack is a critical part of the running experience for me (I’d never leave the house without some stuff queued up on Spotify), and the best running music I’ve heard is the album Awake by Tycho. It’s upbeat and has a good tempo to help you keep going, but I find it’s a trigger for me to ponder what’s been happening in life, which is something I enjoy about running - that chance to clear my head and forget about my troubles!
You'd go mad if you listened to the same thing over and over on repeat though, so at a friend's recommendation, I've been listening to Nowhere by Roald Velden and I also really enjoy a bit of instrumental noise-rock from Three Trapped Tigers to get the juices flowing.
Overall, even at this early stage I am feeling positive and satisfied that at least I’m in the right frame of mind to try something.
However, I think my main problems could be:
- Not letting myself just forget I’m even attempting this!
- Finding enough time to get out to run and not let it impact the rest of my life
- Whether I will be bored doing the same local routes over again
- Having the determination to get out regardless of the rubbish weather we have here in Scotland.
But right now, the challenge is underway. It’ll be interesting for me to see how I get on.
