Janathon Planathon

You'll notice a new addition to the right side of this blog - a Janathon Participant logo.  I came across the Janathon in one of the running blogs that I follow.  Taking part in the Janathon means that you do some form of exercise every day (and blog about it) for the entire month of January.  It's a chance to motivate yourself during the cold & dark days of January as well as to meet, support, and be encouraged by (at least in an on-line sense) other Janathoners.

I decided after last year's injury-plagued marathon attempt that my body can't handle more than three days of running per week anymore and, while it's easy(ish) enough for me to stay motivated to do those days, my natural laziness gets in the way of doing anything else.  My recent foray into adding a gym component to my training has been going okay, but I can foresee the day (and it'll be sooner rather than later) when I happily revert back to do-the-bare-minimum.

Hence the Janathon.  I'm not able to say to myself, 'I'm going to exercise more,' and then do it.  No, I need to tart it up with faffery.  I've filled out a registration form, acquired a logo, joined a Facebook page, made some posts on said Facebook page, and am now making a formal announcement to the world at large about my intentions.  Having done all of this, maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to stick with it.

Yum yum, in my tum!

Day 1 went well.  After a shaky start in which I tried to convince myself that numerous trips to and from the kitchen in search of that processed-but-really-nice Bavarian smoked cheese, Kettle Chips, ice cream, cake, and chocolates counted as exercise and that therefore I could just as well stay at home, I went to the gym.  Today's focus was upper body as well as lots of stretching and some warm-up and cool-down cardio things.  It was fine, and I'm glad that I went.

So here's my Janathon plan:

Monday:  Gym (upper body)
Tuesday:  Gym (cardio cross-train, to take the place of a run)
Wednesday:  run
Thursday:  Gym (lower body)
Friday:  run
Saturday:  Random activity depending on my mood (but not involving eating)
Sunday:  Long run

Impressed?  Don't be.  If I were really serious about all of this, I'd be entering a NoMoreCake-athon.