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Sports Backers Blog

Time to Set Your Fitness Calendar

by Jon Lugbill

I have to admit I’m controlled by my calendar at work. Once I agree to a meeting, I tend to schedule everything else around it. I map out my work year by setting up board meetings and other work related functions. I add our big events and functions to my calendar, like our Active RVA Fitness Awards luncheon and our Times Dispatch/Sports Backers Scholarship Dinner.

I’m sure I’m not alone in my waking up in the morning and looking at my calendar to tell me where I’m going and who I’m meeting with that day. My co-workers look at my calendar and schedule around pre-existing entries. I could have something about walking my dog Sally, and they would schedule around it.

Shouldn’t I do the same thing with my fitness activities? I sort of do this already. I have run the Blue Ridge Relay the past two years on a team with two of our board members–Randy Parks and Tyler Hutchens. I actually schedule our board meeting a week later in September so it doesn’t conflict with the relay.

I started to ask around to see what other people do and found some examples of this scheduling fitness behavior. I chatted with Lisa Sims, event director at Venture Richmond, at a recent Richmond 2015 board meeting, and she says she always puts the Race for the Cure and the Ukrop’s Monument Avenue 10k on her schedule each year. She also has an ongoing meeting scheduled in her calendar for both Tuesday and Thursday mornings at 5:30 am to go running with a friend of hers.  She even sets a reminder bell to go off to force her out of bed on those mornings.

calendarThis idea of scheduling fitness has some merit. I asked Lenora Mariner, a Midlothian YMCA 10k Training Team coach about her fitness scheduling habits. She laughed when I mentioned Lisa’s bell to remind her to get up, and she said she doesn’t do anything with her calendar on a daily basis. She does set up her year long calendar with several set items including her big goal race for the coming year and the Ukrop’s Monument Avenue 10k, which, for her, includes the ten Saturdays before it for the training team runs. Her big goal for 2015 is finishing her first Ironman Triathlon in Louisville in October. She also sets up events leading up to this big goal that includes runs, triathlons and other biking events. By early January, she pretty much has her events scheduled throughout the year. The rest of her life then gets scheduled around her fitness goals.

Here at Sports Backers, we produce a printed calendar with lots of motivating pictures and the dates of all of our events. If you would like one, just e-mail me at [email protected], and I’ll drop one in the mail to you. But, if you really want to be serious about your fitness goals in 2015, you might want to put your goal events into whatever electronic calendar you keep at work, and you may even consider including your daily fitness activities as well. Let’s start the year off right with committing to physical fitness. Join me, and make it a big part of your 2015 calendar!

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