In addition to picking up the FlexiPass and using the local community centre gym and Vancouver pools, I’ve started up the “Couch To 5K” running program again. I started at week 3 this time, which has the core pattern of “Run 2 min, walk 2 min, run 3 min, walk 2 min” repeated twice.

I love this pattern. The fact that it’s only repeated twice means it feels like I get to the ‘halfway’ audio cue much earlier than usual (although the first day I forgot that the second run of the loop was 3 minutes & wondered if I’d accidentally paused the app before I remembered). It’s been really easy for me to do – so much so that I’ve done it for the last 3 days in a row.

Yesterday morning I was feeling really sluggish & dim, so I thought “I should go for a walk.” Some weird new voice in my mind said “y’know, that run yesterday was pretty easy and we felt great after that – why not make it a run?”

So I did. And sure enough, I felt great afterwards and my brain was revved up.

So when I got up this morning, despite the fact that it was drizzling out, I thought “I wonder if it would work again?”

So I did. This time, my brain is happy but my shins & calves are a bit pissed off. They have some analgesic cream on them now and they’re much happier.

I’m not going to set any firm goals around this because there’s no better way to kill off a fledgling new habit than to ‘harden up’ about it; the first day you don’t do it, you’ve blown it and stop completely. But since exercising in the morning tends to suppress my appetite for a while it does have me thinking about combining this with intermittent fasting. Again, I’m not planning any firm goals here but I’ll see how it goes & let you know as I find out.