I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:

I exercise every day because I lack the discipline to take a day off.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I’d love to hear your comments.

Image: zirconicusso / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

1. Before you begin. Find a training schedule, courtesy of Hal Higdon. (Thanks, David B., for the link.)
2. Think about how long it will take to work through the training schedule. Allow a couple of extra weeks to sort out the dodgy hamstring.
3. Identify a target date for the race, then look for a half marathon in a beautiful place that you’ve always wanted to visit. Don’t register for it just yet. Are you sure you can do this?
4. Start the training schedule on a cold, windy day, and don’t stretch or warm up enough. Be joined by a friend who runs a little too fast for you, then try to keep up with him. Quit running after a couple of miles when that hamstring seizes up.
5. Decide it might be prudent to spend the two spare weeks walking, stretching, and rehabbing that troublesome muscle.
6. Take advantage of the extra two weeks to read the training schedule more carefully. Learn some new stretches.
7. Start the training schedule again, determined to do it right.
8. Week 1, Day 1. Head in the general direction of the park with a plan to walk three miles to warm up and then work through the “stretch and strengthen” regimen.
9. Stop to meet a friend for coffee first, though, and arrive at the park in pouring rain. Adjust the plan to start with the weight training.
10. Discover that you don’t have the $1.75 for admission to the fitness center. Berate yourself for never carrying any cash.
11. Think about rearranging the week’s schedule, but decide that Week 1, Day 1, is a little early to start playing fast and loose with the regimen.
12. Drive to a nearby convenience store with an ATM.
13. Spend $4.25 in ATM fees and bank service charges to withdraw some cash.
14. Buy a pack of gum and a scratch-off lottery ticket at the convenience store to get some change, because you know that the fitness center won’t have change for a $20 bill.
15. Win $2 on the lottery ticket!
16. Drive back to the fitness center.
17. Work out, trying not to look like too much of an idiot for not knowing what half of the machines are for.
18. Do some stretches.
19. Go for a 3-1/2-mile walk, more conscious than ever of how much you prefer the walking trail to the gym.
20. Go home and do some more stretches.
21. Week 1, Day 2. Stretch as if your life depends on it. Then stretch some more.
22. Walk half a mile to warm up.
23. Run three miles, paying careful attention for the first sign of trouble with the hamstring, and stopping a couple of times for water breaks.
24. Walk three miles.
25. Stretch again.
26. Go home thinking that you might be able to do this.
27. Week 1, Day 3. Wake up relieved not to be racked with pain.
28. Stretch even more than you did the day before.
29. Walk a mile to warm up.
30. Run two miles.
31. Take a moment to enjoy the fact that you ran two miles without any complaints from the hamstring.
32. Walk 3-1/2 miles.
33. Stretch again.
34. Week 1, Day 4. Wake up knowing that you can do this!
35. Register for the race.
36. Post it to Facebook and bask in the admiration and encouragement of your friends.
37. Meet a friend at the park. Do all of your stretching even though you know your friend is eager to start running.
38. Walk half a mile to warm up.
39. Run three miles. Delight in having kept pace with your much-younger friend!
40. Go to the fitness center. Work out, feeling slightly less like an idiot than you did last time.
41. Walk back to meet your friend at the stretching area, feeling like some kind of superhuman.
42. Stretch again (because you’re not).
43. Enjoy thinking about Week 1, Day 5: Rest.

Yeah, I know it’s not July any more. The month ended in a flurry of activity during which I was too busy to complete any posts, so my first job for August is to wrap up July. Bear with me!

A few years ago, I started thinking of my daily walk as a crude analog to the wandering of our African savannah ancestors in pursuit of game and other food stuffs. They probably spent several hours every day chasing after or rooting around for their next meal, and the one after that, and the one after that. There are three grocery stores within a half a mile of where I pitch my tent, so I don’t have to wander in search of food. But evolution optimized my body and my mind for this movement; walking makes me alert and curious, ready to chase after whatever prey appears on the horizon.

Here in the Information Age, the object of my foraging is ideas. I make my living by collecting, arranging, curating, packaging, explaining, and selling ideas. I need fresh ones every day, and I often capture them while I’m hunting and gathering at the park. While I was taking the 50/50 writing workshop a couple of years ago, I discovered that if I read the day’s prompt before heading out for my evening walk, I’d often come home with a story or essay ready to write. During the present month-long blogging project, I spent many walks turning over post ideas in my head, then came home to write them out.

If my primitive metaphor isn’t enough to make you feel like moving, then take a look at a few headlines I scavenged: Aerobic Exercise Grows Brain Cells; Exercise Grows New Brain Cells; Mental Benefits of Walking; Stronger, Faster, Smarter. We’ve always known that working out was good for the body, but there’s a lot of new scientific evidence pointing toward the benefits of exercise for the brain.

Do you use your brain? Do you want to keep it fit until you’re done using it? Do your 21st-century lifestyle and career require you to trade in ideas? Get your body moving, and your brain will get stronger. And don’t worry—the Information Age will still be here when you get back to the computer.

About a year ago, a business development client and good friend said to me, “I love my job, I’m doing exactly what I want to be doing, my whole life is perfectly on track except for this one thing: I’m fat, and it makes me miserable.”

My answer was, “Well, I guess we know what to work on next.”

She picked a bad time to get me fired up about a new project—the second week of August. She’s not a big fan of Houston summer heat. But she somehow pushed through her reluctance and let me drag her out to Memorial Park for her first walk in recent memory on Monday, August 17, 2009. She was miserable—hot, tired, flushed, and running with sweat—and she made sure I knew it. About two-thirds of the way around, she asked if we could stop to rest. We parked ourselves on a bench for a few minutes.

It became a weekly routine. I never pushed her to establish a specific day or time, and in return, she usually spared me the excuses when I knew she had an evening free and I’d call to ask, “Up for a walk?” She made it through the brutal August and September heat to the payoff of a long, lovely fall. We started working in an extra day every once in a while. She scaled back the whining. I don’t think she was significantly less miserable, but she’d come to realize that the complaining wouldn’t do any good with me as her trainer.

When I started walking two laps around the park in the atypical cold last December, we modified our routine. I’d walk the first lap, then she’d meet me at the stretching area and join in on the second one. I tried always to acknowledge the effort it took her to get out there after nightfall in the cold and damp. By the time we’d extended her at-least-once-a-week streak into the spring of 2010, she’d quit needing a rest stop.

Now she’s coming up on the anniversary of the program. She reported to me tonight that although she hasn’t lost any substantial amount of weight, for the first time in a decade, she’s no heavier than she was a year ago. And there are more signs of progress: we’re making the laps in less time, she’s not experiencing as much next-day soreness as she did at the start, and she made it all the way through last winter without ever getting seriously ill. She’d been laid up for a week or two with bronchitis or bad chest colds at least once each of the previous three winters.

I’m very proud of her.

Right before we started her on the once-a-week program, I wrote her a long e-mail pep talk. I tracked down that message tonight to check whether my advice turned out to be any good. Here’s part of that message (emphasis added):

Don’t be discouraged by the slow pace of progress. The goals you’re going to be setting are for a lifetime, but it’s a healthier, more fulfilling, more satisfying, more pain-free, more energetic lifetime, and it will be worth the work…. [W]e didn’t get ourselves overweight in a year of bad habits, so we’re not going to fix the problem with a year of good habits. But making a few incremental changes in our lives—more good foods, more good habits, a little more dancing, a little more walking, some other fun activities that you’ll discover later—can change the trajectory and get us where we want to go.

Gayle, if you’re reading, congratulations! I’ll see you at the park one day soon.

Image: Maggie Smith / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

At the end of last November, in an effort to jump-start a weight-loss regimen that had stalled, I made up my mind to walk twice around the loop at Memorial Park every day for the month of December. November 30 was a Monday, so I started one day early for good measure. The next day, just in time for my “official” December Project kickoff, the weather turned nasty for two solid weeks. December 1, it was raining and 45 degrees by evening. Then a cooling trend set in. By Thursday, there was talk of snow. I woke up Friday morning to moderate flurries.

At first, denial seemed like a comfortable attitude toward the weather. It wasn’t as if I could do anything about it. But a friend called mid-morning to warn me that it would get progressively worse as the day wore on. “If you must go, you should do it soon.” So I bundled up in two or three layers of shirts, a scarf, knit cap, a windbreaker, and my warmest running shorts. I give up the shorts when the weather gets so cold that ice starts to form on my skin, and not a minute sooner.

Snow was beginning to accumulate when I arrived at Memorial Park. There were plenty of parking spaces to choose from. In the course of 6½ miles, I encountered perhaps a dozen other people. Half of those were sightseers. They’d pull off the road, get out of the car, look at the falling snow—and the crazy man in the shorts—for a few minutes, and then get back in the car and take off in search of somewhere warm.

But the other half…those were my tribe! I recognized some of them as park regulars. With one in particular, a man in his late 50s, I’d had a mutual smile-and-nod pact for a year or two. But on that snowy December morning, I looked up to see him coming toward me with a big grin on his face. It felt like the right moment to solidify our bond, so as soon as we were within earshot, I said, “It’s days like this when you find out who’s serious.”

He said, “Hey, I’m from Colorado. This is like a nice spring day.” We shared the laugh and went our separate ways. A mile and a half later, we met again in front of the tennis center. We compared notes on which parts of our bodies had gone completely numb. There was a look of pride and satisfaction in his eyes that felt familiar.

When we were ready to break for our cars, he said, “See you tomorrow?”

I said, “Count on it.”

If you find something you love doing that’s good for your health, your self‑esteem, your sanity, and your spirit, you might become obsessed. It’s okay. You’ll be in good company.

Today was my first full, on‑the‑water rowing class. As I mentioned a few days ago, a friend (Mark) and I are taking a Learn to Row class offered by a club in Sugar Land, Texas. I was feeling apprehensive in the last few days because my first attempt at taking a few strokes tethered to the dock on Thursday night felt clumsy and awkward. We’d spent some time on machines and listening to the instructor in the classroom, but there was a part of the mechanics that I couldn’t make any sense of at all. How in the world was I supposed to know when to feather the blade and when to turn it upright? The instructor struggled to explain it to me, but I wasn’t getting it.

I wasn’t looking forward to revealing yet another sport for which I have no talent, especially with the added risk of humiliation-by-immersion. I didn’t sleep well last night. I lay awake in bed for a long time thinking about all the ways I might suck at rowing.

It turns out that my worries were unfounded.

We arrived at the Oyster Creek Boathouse just before 9:30. The club members had already been out for the 8 a.m. club row, and they had boats ready at the docks for our class. We received our assignments; Mark and I would be part of the crew for an eight-seat boat rigged for sweeping—an arrangement in which each rower handles one oar. We took seats three (starboard) and four (port). All the rowers stowed our bottles of water and adjusted the “stretchers” that would hold our feet.

Marty, the club’s athletic director, would serve as coxswain (or “cox”), the crewman who calls out commands over the boat’s PA system from a forward-facing seat in the stern. Two veteran rowers would sit in seat number one in the bow and at “stroke”—seat number eight—to round out the crew’s six students. Marty gave us a few quick reminders and words of encouragement. He admonished us that from here on out, he was in charge, and that we’d traded in our names for numbers. He ordered “Oars out!” for the port rowers. Then into the boat, away from the dock, and we were off!

The veteran rowers took a few strokes to get us clear of the dock, and then Cox started putting us to work rowing in pairs. I waited nervously while One and Two took their turn. Then he called out, “Three and Four at the finish, ready to row,” and there was no time left for nerves. I focused all my concentration on what we’d practiced, and my problem of mechanics vanished. In that boat gliding along in the middle of Oyster Creek, the turning and feathering of the oar blade was perfectly obvious. Worry instantly gave way to delight! Marty said, “Nice work, Three and Four.” Woohoo!

The next hour and half was filled with a lot more of the same—practice, practice, practice, and I won’t bore you with the details. To sum up: there were some rough spots, I got tired, I bruised my left pinky, there were some smooth spots, I made a few good strokes and a lot of sloppy ones, and I had tons of fun. I used muscles I didn’t know I had. I’ll be sore tomorrow or the next day. Did I mention that it was tons of fun?

The lesson here is one I’ve heard many times from my coach friends, but I needed to learn it again. You have to show up. All the worry in the world won’t make you better or worse at tackling the challenges you face. But if you show up, pay attention, focus on the task, and hold yourself open to learning, maybe something good will happen.

Once in a while, everything comes together to create the perfect walk. There was an afternoon in Los Angeles in January of last year. I’d spent the day in a conference listening to brilliant people talk about their hopes for the future of human progress. I was high on contagious optimism and altruism. One of my new friends offered to show me the way to Griffith Park. I followed her through rush-hour traffic up into the hills, then she showed me where to park and where the running trail started. As I walked and jogged, the sun went down over the hills on one side and the San Gabriel Mountains faded to deep purple on the other. James Taylor sang “That’s Why I’m Here” on my iPod. I break into a grin from ear to ear / and suddenly it’s perfectly clear. It was an ecstatic moment. I’m sure that my feet never touched the ground.

And I recall an early spring day at Memorial Park in some recent year. Dappled sunlight was coming through the deciduous trees, just beginning to fill in with tender yellow-green leaves. The breeze was warm, and I knew it would only be a few weeks until it was too hot to walk at midday. But on this day, the sun felt great on my pasty-white skin. The soundtrack: Indigo Girls, “The Wood Song.” No one gets to miss the storm of what will be / just holding on for the ride. And for a moment, maybe 30 seconds, everything seemed to make complete and perfect sense. Friends I’d made, and lost, the ebb and flow of my career and my love life, the passage of time, the inevitability of change—I understood it all. And then I guess the sun went behind a cloud, and I was back to trudging along on sore feet.

But these moments and a few others are always with me. They remind me that the reward for hard work comes in many forms. There’s the delight of buying the next smaller size of clothing, the knowledge that I’m steadily improving my health, and once in a while, moments of ecstatic happiness.

In writing and exercise, sometimes there are moments of pure, unadulterated joy, and no amount of struggle seems too much to endure.

But on the other hand…

I’m thrilled when people comment on my exercise regimen—or my blog—and say that I’ve inspired them, or that I make it look easy. But I wonder sometimes if “making it look easy” is doing a disservice to people who are working hard on their own projects for self-improvement. So tonight I want to come clean—it ain’t always easy.

I spent an hour last night trying to come up with a blog post. It was the end of a very long week with mountains of work, many hours of writing, two rowing classes, and a workshop to finish preparing and to teach. In that hour, I banged out about a thousand words, but around 1 a.m. I conceded that I was too exhausted to write anything coherent. I resolved either to write two posts today, or to be content with trailing a day behind for the rest of the July Project. I went to bed disappointed that I couldn’t deliver the goods.

The exercise routine presents a different kind of challenge. An uncomfortable, reluctant, grouchy six-mile walk gets the job done just as much as a graceful, eager, enthusiastic six-mile walk. The only audience I’m trying to impress with exercise is myself, so quality isn’t an issue in the same way it is in writing. But a rough walk still has consequences. It affects my energy level, my sleep, and how much enthusiasm I can muster the next day.

Last weekend, I went out for a late walk in Galveston and got caught in a squall. When I turned around to head back to where I’d started from, the wind blew sand into my face. I started jogging to get the walk over with faster. My eyes squinted tight against the sand, I tripped over the ruins of someone’s sandcastle, landed hard on one heel, then stumbled for a few paces to avoid ending up face-down on the beach. I decided to abandon the treacherous sand for the stability of the Seawall.

I don’t know whether my graceless sand-dancing or jogging on a 17-foot-thick slab of concrete was to blame, but I woke up the next day with a sore lower back. I’ve been treating it all week with stretches, ibuprofen, and generous application of the mantra “I’m sure this has nothing to do with my age.”

In exercise as in writing, sometimes it’s a struggle. Do your best to get through it.

But on the other hand…

I headed to the park for my walk early today because my first Learn to Row class was tonight. I arrived there around 3:30, the hottest part of the day. I didn’t have to wait long for relief from the heat, though. The sky clouded over, and then about halfway through the first lap, it started to sprinkle. It didn’t rain for very long—maybe about 10 minutes—just enough to get me miserably wet. Then the sun came back out and turned all the fresh rain into a layer of hot steam that hovered over the trail.

Image: Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It was too humid to dry out from the wetting, but it didn’t matter, because another one was coming anyway. As I got to the last half-mile leg of the 6½‑mile walk, the sky opened up. This time, it was more than a sprinkle. The torrential rain continued until about the time I arrived back at my car.

I wiped down my iPod as well as I could with my soggy sweat towel and threw it in the trunk of the car. I grabbed my gym bag and headed for the locker room in the tennis center. Then it dawned on me that I hadn’t brought an extra pair of shoes—I’d planned to put my running shoes back on to go to rowing class. No time to go home for another pair, though, so I resolved to endure wet feet for the next few hours. I showered, toweled off, dressed, and then squished my poor feet back into the sodden shoes.

I’ve tried to find a lesson in today’s outing, but I’m drawing a blank. If you decide to commit to exercising every day—or sticking to any rigorous plan of action—there will be days when you have to walk around in wet sneakers, or the moral equivalent thereof. But you will have done what you set out to do. Maybe the lesson here is that not every day contains a lesson. Some days you just have to get through.