I have struggled with running lately. Anyone that follows my words here know that I have seen myself diminish in cardio capabilities by over a minute per kilometer in the past 1.5 years even though I never let off the gas as far as regular running is concerned. Even though I sometimes seem to almost lecture others on their exercise habits I found myself slipping as far as my motivation to go running or even go walking was concerned.
Well the other day I heard something said by some motivational speaker about how you can change anything in your life. You just need to sit on your bed and clear your mind, think about it, and then determine what it is that you want to change in your life. The answer will come to you, but it might be disappointing what the answer is to make that happen. I think it was Jordan Peterson, I don't know.
Well the day after I meditated on this notion I decided, the next day while having my morning coffee, that instead of doing what I would normally do which is to fire up the computer and get some work done and then keep doing that and then go exercise later, that I would go running on an empty stomach first thing in the morning.
Don't get the wrong idea here: I am NOT a crack of dawn sort of person. But on this particular day since I had gone to bed quite early the night before, I found myself wide awake at 530 AM and knew that if i sat down to get to work right away, that I would be finished with all my work before noon. This sounds great for a lot of people but what it accomplishes as a sort of negative side effect for me is that it also makes me quite lethargic and less likely to go and work out very hard.
So I decided to go ahead and do the hardest part of any run in the world: I went and put on my shoes and walked out the door. Thankfully the day was a bit overcast even when the sun did start coming up so I wasn't going to be contending with any sort of morning heat wave.
I carried on with a normal pace but found that I was actually much more energetic doing the run at this time than I normally would be during the other times of day that I have attempted this. I went for an hour or so and managed about 8km. As usual, I didn't look at the pace or even how far I had gone until I felt as though I had been working out for a good 40 minutes or so already. By the time I was finished I felt like I definitely could do more but had already achieved my goal of an elevated heart rate for an hour, which is what I always do.
Now I was feeling good and when I went back inside I took a shower and was very surprised to notice that I wasn't feeling hungry. This is strange because before I went on the run and was just drinking my coffee, I felt famished. I don't know what this phenomenon is all about but I no longer felt hungry. My head was also a lot more clear from the run and Joe Rogan and his guest had actually taught me a couple of things that I didn't know.
I went and sat down at my computer after the run and found that I was much more capable of working than I normally would have been otherwise. It was like I had already not just exercised my body, but my mind as well. I ended up having a great several hours of work that seemed effortless and later on when I had done enough for the day I actually went and did a rather weak but still existent gym session. All this happened well before 4pm as well. After that I went to the roof of my building and read a book in the semi-sunshine that we managed after the clouds had somewhat cleared.
I'm not saying that I am going to do this every day, because some days I wake up too late and I am not the kind of person that likes to set alarms if I don't have to. However, in the future if I am already awake at this time anyway, I think that this is a wonderful way to start the day. I didn't even feel compelled to take a nap which is always something that I kind of feel when I have been awake since farmer-o-clock.
Do you exercise this way? It is my understanding that a lot of people do and this is my first real foray into that sort of thing. I plan on sticking with it as much as possible