Pre-New Year's New Year's Resolution

I've been thinking about what to write about next. The last two or three posts were all about things that I reflected on throughout the day when I didn't really have anything else to think about. Finals week is about to start and that takes up a large part of my thinking time, whether it's organizing in which order I am going to take the unscheduled ones or double checking the days, times, and places of the scheduled ones and when I'm planning on studying what. And nobody wants to read about that!

So I've tried to come up with other things that I consciously or unconsciously think about during the day. It didn't take long before I realized one thing that I see nearly every day that triggers the same thought over and over, every time somebody runs past me in jogging shoes or I walk in between the two athletic buildings on campus and see sweaty people coming out of them:

I should start doing that.

Who can say aught against the benefits of working out? During the last three months of my mission, I became a convert to daily or at least regular exercise. My companion and I started running (at his insistence, I might add) two or three times a week in the morning at 6:30. It only took about fifteen minutes if that, but I was severely out of shape and am not the cheeriest of souls at such an hour of the day. After a few weeks we started running farther than just to the bridge and back and started doing laps around our block. One lap was about a mile and a half and we started running every day. I'll never know why I agreed to such a thing and while I never really looked forward to it per se (does anybody ever really look forward to working out at 6:30 in the morning?), I did begin to like how I felt after running. I also started to watch my eating habits and nearly eliminated Nutella from my diet (a far cry from one year before when two of us were downing one jar a week). In addition I started doing pushups in the evenings before bed and this is where I really started to see some improvement. My companion even convinced me to run two 5Ks or two laps around our block. I felt great!

Fast forward about two months to my first few weeks back home. One morning I woke up at 7:00 (it seems so much later than 6:30) determined to take up the same schedule. I put on my running shoes and shorts like an old pro and set out to run around my block two, maybe three times considering how much better I had become in those last three months. Perhaps I tried to go too fast too soon and overestimated my aerobic abilities and capacity, perhaps it was the change in elevation my companion warned me I'd see in returning to the mountains of Utah. Whatever it was, before I'd even gotten around the block one time, I was on the verge of cardiac arrest. Few things are more discouraging than feeling like you are about to give up the ghost after having run a quarter of a mile at age 21.

Ever since that day I have never gone running or done any intentional exercise of any sort. As a result, every time I see anybody running I get a little twinge of guilt that still hasn't stopped needling at me.

Now, I'm not a large person. I've stayed at the same weight for a couple of years now and I usually can eat whatever I want and nothing happens. I'm quite thin and I take a certain amount of pride in it.While I am infinitely grateful for this, there's one thing that's been nagging at me for a while (this takes place after I get that twinge of guilt upon seeing some proactive, in-shape soul), and that's the fact that I'm not getting any younger. I may be able to eat whatever I want now, but that surely won't be the case in ten or fifteen years. What am I going to do then?!

It usually takes me a long time and a lot of thinking before I make any sort of large personal change or decide to take on something that will require regular effort on my part (this blog for example), but I think I'm pretty close to deciding to take up running again. I figure that if I don't put my pride on the shelf now and work hard, I'll have to put it on the shelf in ten or fifteen years (maybe sooner, perish the the thought...) and work a lot harder then. I guess it's kind of my pre-New Year's New Year's Resolution. Since I've decided to make it a resolution, I should probably start running this week.....

Meh. I'll wait until after Christmas.