Are you a dead beat parent?

Not too long ago I was sitting at home with my family, and I started to get that itchy feeling to get moving. I did not have enough time to go out for a run so I just started jogging around slowly in my house. My 2 year old daughter got very excited and wanted to run with me. I am a nerd so I measured the living room and kitchen to see the distance for each lap I was doing. My daughter ended up running just under a mile with me, and laughed the entire time! My other daughter just sat there and stared at us with a grin and laughed at us the whole time.

My point in telling you this is how much kids are watching their parents. There isn’t a thing I wouldn’t do to keep my kids safe and to help them grow up able and ready for things. I believe most parents are this way, but for this conversation I will not go into detail of my disapproval of dead beat parents.  But how does fitness tie into all of this?

Some people think of fitness as this luxury that they cannot afford, or that it is vain to take care of themselves by exercising. Whatever the stigma is that they have tied to exercise, I think it is pathetic. Do only rich, successful people exercise? Do only people who can’t afford a car exercise? NO! Why should you feel guilty or embarrassed for exercising and eating healthy than? In saying and asking all of this I want to reflect off of a quote that I have always admired. “No matter how good the excuse, the result is the same”.

Now this quote can be obvious or deep. Anyway you look at it, it is true. No matter what your excuse is for being unhealthy the result is just that, unhealthy. I am a student who does not have a lot of time to do as I please. If I want to reap the benefits from exercise I have to make it a priority. Making it a priority does not cancel out other priorities that are important. Think about it, is your whole day spent doing what you consider a priority? I know that I have days that seem long and cannot squeeze in 20-30 minutes to move around. When that is the case it is because I did not take the time to plan out when I could do it. Sometimes it means waking up 40 minutes early.

Myself, like many parents out there, want our kids to have a better, happier life than ours (and my life is pretty good, and I choose to see it that way). I hope my kids see that my journey to try and be healthier has been tough but worth it. So please stop with the excuses and get busy doing something healthy!

Winter time AGAIN!

A while back I wrote a post about winter running. Right now I know that it is still technically fall, but temperatures in Salt Lake are dropping, and we have had some snow fall.

Honestly I can’t help but laugh again as the cold sets in and see less runners out and about. Unless I was the abominable snowman in another life, I just don’t understand why so many throw in the towel when old man winter comes to town. I know for many that start out running for the first time in the summer have a hard time with the transition because of many reasons such as
school starts, less daylight, etc, etc, and running doesn’t seem to be a priority any more. Believe it or not good memories can be made during the winter months. I have many fond memories in the cold.

December 2004 when I used to go down to a dirt road to do my runs. One morning I put on my jacket, hat, shoes and pants and drove to the starting point of my route. It had snowed a couple days before and the snow had melted a bit to make a nice layer of ice when the freeze showed up. Ice was all over the place and the canal on the side of the road has a nice thin layer of ice over it. As my body ran south my head wanted to look east at the beautiful sunrise over the snow capped mountains. It was indeed a site to behold as I lost my footing and could not revive my steps without veering into the canal. I remember looking at the canal thinking just maybe I could hit the ice with my body spread out and the ice would not break. However my hands and feet hit first and the ice gave way. Luckily the canal was only about 3 feet deep, but none the less it was 3 feet deep and I was covered in ice water.

As I crawled out of the ice I shouted out how stupid the road was for cutting so close to the canal, and of course how unsafe it would be for the children in the area. When I re-examined the area I realized how the canal really was not as close to the road as I thought it was. Now I just felt like an idiot, and I ran back to my car in shame.

The funny thing about this is that the next morning I found myself on the same route and that my foot steps were the only ones still on the route. As I ran past my accident spot I could see the entire situation re enacted completely by my footsteps. I couldn’t help but laugh. I have had many more memories since than, none of them involve me falling into a canal though.

Sorry (maybe)

I was recently scrolling around at some running blogs that I use to visit. Some of these are by elite athletes others are by people just like me. On one of the blogs the author, who is just an average Joe, kept apologizing in a post how

he had not posted in a couple of weeks. I saw that he had few followers and has been online for 3 years with only 5,000 hits. While he tirelessly apologized I couldn’t help but post a comment about how annoying it was to read his constant apologizes. Later on I paid a visit to see if he replied to my comment.

Now if he is reading this post I do want to say sorry for not minding my “blogging manners”. After all you may have been keeping a blog for close relatives or friends, and I probably just stumbled upon your blog.  Moving on…..the reason I brought this up is because my last post was in July. While starting out my first sentence I immediately started to say the words “I apologize that it has been a while”.  While I instinctively wrote down these beginning words I thought about how I shouldn’t flatter myself by acting like I have such a lasting impact on people through this site.

I started this blog under the recommendation of a school adviser telling me that it is great thing to have prospective schools see what I have been involved in. Amongst the other reasons I was told by this adviser I have come to realize that they did not know exactly what they were talking about when I was told a blog gives you brownie points with prospective schools.

So here I am just another running blog in cyber space. However I will say this. Running has changed my life. I have to stay active or else I get cranky and over time get very depressed. I do see individuals that exercise would fix a lot of problems in their lives and help them grasp the other problems that exercise will not directly fix. I will start to take advantage of sharing my stories on here again. After all I have had numerous people in the past month ask me why I don’t write on here any more. So let me get back into the writing mindset, and soon I will be back online.