{"id":1303,"date":"2017-03-24T06:09:54","date_gmt":"2017-03-24T11:09:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gilcanrun.com\/?p=1303"},"modified":"2017-03-24T06:09:54","modified_gmt":"2017-03-24T11:09:54","slug":"all-caught-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gilcanrun.com\/?p=1303","title":{"rendered":"All caught up"},"content":{"rendered":"

Did my makeup run today<\/a>, got my miles in. Cleared a lot of the gunk (technically you’d say mucous) out of my sinuses. It’s a weird day here, well it was a weird morning, and afternoon yesterday. There was a very thick fog which is very rare. It was amazing, some of the pictures I have seen from the area this morning were truly beautiful and a bit creepy, that’s the thing about fog right, a bit creepy.
\nSo these were good miles today, about on pace with my healthy runs of the same course. I started getting really tired at the end, a bit wobbly. At the start my right foot was in some discomfort as well as the heel. I will have to monitor that situation. But by the end of the run it felt fine.
\nI’m still a little tired, I’m still a little sniffly, but I feel so much better today. I am ready for work, both today and tomorrow, which means I can start focusing on Monday and Tuesday now, in fact, I’ll try and have through Wednesday planned out and prepared by the end of the weekend. My usual short-term orientation with goals needs to change a little when it comes to my work, and I need to start planning things a bit more in advance to give myself more free-time in the end. Do the heavy-lifting up front so to speak. But I had this discussion, about goals, not about work, with a friend last night.
\nThey were feeling listless and depressed, and I explained it was up to them to set goals and take responsibility for achieving them. They started talking about massively long-term goals that they are in no place to ponder right now, so I explained how I operate. The long goal when all this started was to get healthy. So in general, I knew I wanted to work toward that. So then I said, what do I need to do, with myself to make that happen. I made a list of: Eat less, exercise more, quit smoking. Simple things. So then I prioritized those things. First was quitting smoking. Given my health emergency was caused by an inability to breathe, quitting smoking seemed most urgent. Then, given the fact that my physical condition was fairly horrible, thanks to the asthma attack which caused the medical emergency, I figured eating less\/better would be next, then exercise would be the last.
\nFrom there, on the advice from my doctor, I took on one task at a time. Quitting smoking was difficult and took some time and allowing myself to be medicated to make that happen. Chantix was the name-brand drug I used to stop smoking. I’ve talked about that before, but it warrants repeating. Quitting smoking was so difficult for me, I had to use a low-dose anti-depressant to make it happen. I failed a lot trying every other way to quit. I really wanted to quit, and I have stayed free from all forms of nicotine for almost 6 years now. Vaping is not quitting, you’re still addicted to nicotine, and there is not clear evidence of the long term effects of vaping. Chances are, while better than tobacco smoke, sucking water vapor into your lungs along with other chemicals probably isn’t the best of ideas.
\nOnce I was nicotine free, I took some time, I was still very weak, but I started getting better. So the next step was to change how I ate. Part of that, given that I lived with family, entailed getting my family to agree to cook differently (if not simply less) when they decided to take on cooking duties and include food for me. That was probably the hardest part, getting my family to change how they cooked for me. As far as what I ate, I didn’t change much, but how much. Portion control in my family is an issue. But the big change was I cut out caffeine, except tea. I stopped eating lots of ice cream and such and stayed with fresh fruits and maybe some caramel for desserts. I started making more things on my own, rather than relying on the prepackaged things you find in the store.
\nThen came this. I’ve reminded everyone recently, I didn’t start out running, far from. But 6 days a week, I got out there and I walked 5km, rain or shine, and I kept at it. I would try and pick up the pace more and more each day. All of this, all these things, came with the same motto, the same mantra is you will, “Be better today than you were yesterday.” That didn’t always happen. Sometimes I failed, particularly with smoking cessation. But more days than not, I succeeded. More days than not I got a little better than I was the day before. I’ve just kept that with me, to be a little better than I was before. I still see improvements with running, and I still see them in other areas.
\nOnce I got healthy, the new goal was to stay healthy. More than that, I’ve made goals to live my life better, to enjoy things more. We only get one shot at this, so we should definitely do the most with it. Other goals and ideas have come and been passed, and more are on the horizon. I’ve been slowly and steadily realizing I need to take more responsibility for my abilities, and stop trying to hide them, stop trying to stay under-the-radar. That I need to start bringing these things out and using them to the fullest and take what may come my way with them, good and bad. It’s the bad I think I’m hiding from. So I have to just really start moving toward that, but I still have to remember, take on one thing at a time. Just one.
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