I'm back, everyone. I'm sorry for my long absence but I figured I should get back on the horse.
It's been quite a busy summer. Work has been ridiculously busy lately. My wife started a new job in the spring and her schedule has been completely packed. Throw four kids in the mix along with their activities, and you have one tired husband and father. Even with all the stuff we have been doing I wanted to post what I've been up to.
One of the purposes of this blog is to show people that, even though we all lead very busy lives, we can all achieve our goals. Everyone has something that they want to do. One of my goals in life is to complete an Ironman race. Last year I set the goal for myself that I would complete one by the time I turn 36 (I'll be 34 in about 2 weeks). I always hear people talking about how they don't time to work out or they're too busy. The reality is that there is always time. We have to make time for working out or doing whatever it is that we want to do. I realized that the other night when I said to myself that I haven't had time to write on this blog. That's not the truth. I had the time, I just decided to do something else with it. There were plenty of times where I just sat and watched tv or scrolled through Facebook for the hundredth time in one day. The thing is that I did not make this a priority.
Having four kids and a very busy schedule makes it hard for me to find time to work out. My wife is a nurse and works at a local hospital. I am a building inspector in a neighboring county, My kids are in 2nd grade, kindergarten, preschool and we have a toddler. On the days that my wife and I both work, every minute of the day feels like it's accounted for. If I'm idle at any point, I'm wasting time. My wife and I get up around 5:30am (I know, that's not super early for people that are training for a race but bear with me for now). We wrestle the kids out of bed and get them dressed. My wife heads off to work and I pile the kids in the car and we are off to the babysitter's house. I get the kids there by 7am, Then it's off to pick up my county vehicle. I try to start work between 7:30 and 8 and usually take a 30 minute lunch on those days, Like I said before, every minute counts. When I'm done working, it's a mad dash to get to my personal vehicle so I can get the kids. After that, we head home, cook dinner, and then I put the kids to bed. That's a condensed version, which doesn't include the days that my daughter has to be at cheer practice. Needless to say, we are a busy bunch.
No matter how busy we get, staying active is something that I feel like is very important to me. I need to make time for my workouts or my dream of being an Ironman may never come true. Some days I don't have a lot of time to dedicate to workouts. I used to spend a couple hours on Saturday or Sunday mornings on the saddle of my bike. With being out of town and crowded work schedules, this hasn't happened for me in the past few weeks. There are times when I supplement this with a stationary bike workout at the gym on my lunch hour. There have been plenty of times when I woke up extra early (sometimes like 3:45am) to go for a run. That gets difficult if my wife works several days in a row. Sleep comes at a premium then.
I do a good bit of my workouts at the gym. I try and schedule my long runs and bike rides for the weekend. I'm not crazy about having to train on a treadmill but sometimes it's all I have to work with. I can go to the gym, run, take a shower and go back to work. I actually did most of my training for two months leading up to one of my half marathons and set a new PR. So, it has worked out for me in the past. This upcoming weekend will be tough because my wife has to work all weekend long but I will figure something out.
We all have some sort of goal we want to work towards. For me it's a race, for others it may be a business venture that they've always wanted to start. We need to make time for these things in our life. We can start small, we don't need to go all out. I would love to be able to run 5 or six miles every time I run. My schedule doesn't allow me to do it... but it may allow me to run 3. And 3 is better than 0. That's the same reason why I haven't been posting to this blog, I felt like I needed some big, interesting story but I don't need that. I need to start small and let this blog grow into something bigger. We always feel like we need to go all out when we want to do something but, in the end, we do nothing. Setting small attainable goals will help us achieve our major goals in the future.