Fitness February...

Two treadmills live in the attic at the school in Atqasuk, surrounded by an endless supply of colored paper, old textbooks, and stacks of old documentaries on VHS. This past week was devoid of social interaction so I have been a frequent treadmill dweller. Last night I ran for 40-minutes straight! As the Rolling Stones blasted my earbuds and my feet pounded away on the revolving sidewalk, an electrical plug fell out of the ceiling and landed on my face leaving a nice little bruise on the bridge of my nose.

I've been stuck in Atqasuk for three extra days. After spending most of a week in solitude I can fully embrace the glory of a 'runner's high', the endorphins are much needed. I successfully completed four of my six scheduled workouts this week. After two weeks of doing next to nothing beyond working I am calling this a success! 

I am extending my fitness goal into February. I don't feel like I've quite made it a habit yet. Before leaving NYC in January I was close but it all went downhill after landing in Alaska. Part of it was not having access to a treadmill but most of it was not making exercise a priority...

When I exercise I am a happier person and a more efficient and creative worker. This is a fact. So exercising for 30-minutes does not mean I am losing 30-minutes of work. In the long run I will produce more, higher quality work in a shorter amount of time. 

Fitness plan for this week:

Mon - 25 minutes running

Tues - 45 minutes yoga

Wed - 25 minutes running

Thurs - 45 minutes yoga

Fri - 45 minutes yoga

Sat - 45 minutes running

However, depending on facilities I'm once again counting even 20-minutes of exercise as meeting my goal! 

February Goal: Fitness

January's Creativity Goal in review:

I'm not sure if I can consider January a huge success.  I certainly did increase the amount of personal creativity in my life, but it never did reach a place of feeling like a successful habit formed.  I'll continue to work on it through the month of February, in addition to my new goal...

Introducing February's Goal:

This month, I'll be adding another goal to my plate.  This time, I would like to concentrate on fitness.  I currently attend a yoga class 2 times a week and ride my bike back and forth to work 2-3 times a day.  I'd like to make it a habit to bridge the long gap between Thursday's and Tuesday's yoga classes by doing an additional day of yoga independently over the weekend.  I'd also like to commit to doing some sort of cardio exercise at 2 other times during the week, not counting my short work commute as exercise (maybe I can count anything that exceeds 30 minutes).  That means: 3 days yoga + 2 days cardio = 5 days exercise.

Progress on February's Fitness Goal:

Week 1, 2/1-2/4

• 2 days of yoga
• 1 day cardio=running 2 miles

Week 2, 2/5-2-11

• 1 day of yoga
• cardio day= 12 miles biking
• cardio day=11.5 miles biking

I guess it's a start....

Creativity!

This month, I've been concentrating on maintaining a balance of personal creativity in my life.  So far, I've been reaching my goal every week, with at least 3 hours of creative time.  Over the past few weeks, I've been playing my ukelele more, made a music video with my adorable little nieces, and have been writing a bit more.

This week, I've decided to go back and look over my photos from various adventures and polish them up a bit using Adobe Lightroom.  I'm a little nervous to share them, as I've never received any formal training in photography and honestly have no clue what I'm doing.  Anyway, here they are, the product of my creativity this week:

 

A Kid Again... (Katie)

This weekend I turned into a kid again. And oh my goodness it takes a lot of energy to be a kid. The 30-hour kids yoga teacher training started Thursday night and ended Sunday evening. It's Tuesday and I'm still recovering. Being a kid means running, climbing, jumping, mooing, meowing, and laughing harder than I've laughed in about 5-years.

Because of the training I dropped my official workout plan a bit and let all the exercise happen here...

Gooooaaaalllllssss...

Thank you Vickie for that awesome introduction to the next evolution of our blog.

I personally love making goals, writing lists, dreaming big. And then forgetting about them all until months later when I stumble across a notebook full of New Year's Resolutions.

However... I do think this new method of adopting one habit at a time is the way to go. And while I failed miserably when trying to accomplish this myself, having a co-blogger does put the pressure on.

My goal for the month of January is to stick to a work-out plan. Three-days a week I do yoga and three-days a week I run. I actually started this right after Christmas before January hit and I've only missed one work-out so far. Hurrah!

My main concern is that I will not be able to keep this up while I'm traveling. I leave to the North Slope and Bering Strait regions of Alaska next Friday and I can only imagine how difficult it will be to keep up a training plan in a completely foreign environment.

I thought running outside might be an option if I invested in the appropriate gear. Then I checked the weather. The current temperature in Barrow is -36 and "feels like -52" with wind. Beyond that, when I mentioned the idea to my Dad (who runs in 20 below weather regularly) he said that you can't run outside in Barrow because there are polar bears. And he wasn't joking. So that idea is out.

Knowing this I decided my best chance at success was to design a work-out plan that is completely realistic. My running and yoga regime runs from 20-minutes to an hour depending on the day. However, I've decided that any workout exceeding 20-minutes counts. Even if I have to run laps around a gym I can still get my workout in without losing my mind.

Yoga I'm not too concerned about. I am used to attending fancy little classes in New York City so last week I forced myself to do my own practice for 45-minutes. In the past I've gotten bored quickly when attempting this. This time around I made a really fun playlist which included Spoon, The Rolling Stones and Eddie Vedder. Blasting this in my ears proved to do the trick and I focused and had fun for close to an hour.

Success? We shall see...

The project continues into 2012...

'Tis the season for new year's resolutions. 

All around the world, people are scrambling to achieve their newly set goals. They've purchased memberships to gyms, they've bought PX90, they ran to the store to buy some fashionable yoga mat and some meditation music.  They've created budgets, they've applied for passports, they've thrown away chocolate, alcohol, cigarettes, and credit cards.

While I could go into the statistics I've read about less than 50% of those goal setters making it to the 6 month mark, I don't really feel the need to concentrate on the hopeless side of new year's resolutions.  The fact is, there is something in the nature of rolling the calendar over into a new year that symbolizes fresh beginnings for everyone.  Why not take the opportunity to become a better person?

A while back, Katie read an article that indicated that it takes 21 days to form a new habit, and she started this blog as a means of documenting her progress towards developing new habits.  I joined the blog after a conversation we had about our common goal of becoming morning people.  While it's true that I don't feel like I morphed into some incredible morning person over the month of blogging, I do feel as if I made small progress towards a better balanced life.  I also learned a lot about goal setting and have come to appreciate the accountability and support that co-blogging offers.

And so, let the blogging continue!  We're rounding 22 days up to a solid month.  The plan is to concentrate on developing 12 new habits, working on them one at a time, one per month.  we'll try to blog 1-2 times a week and occasionally revisit a previous month's goal and what continued successes or failures we might have had.

_________

My goal for this month, the month of January, is to spend at least 3 hours a week doing something creative, NOT related to work.  Writing, painting, drawing, taking pictures, learning guitar and ukelele, etc.  I hope to post more on this soon.

_________

Day 20: 8:00am

I awoke without an alarm! And I felt well rested and content.

Coffee.  Conversation.  A bike ride on the tundra.