I jog each Sunday at some time between 7am and 11am. I’d been immensely surprised that the jogging since January has not decreased my energy during the rest of the day – up until now. In fact, prior to today, I was happy to feel full of energy for the whole of each Sunday. When I’d taken to jogging in the distant past I always found I had a jogging “high” for about an hour afterwards and then felt a slump in energy – perhaps even sleepiness.

Today, however, was different. It may be unrelated to the jogging, but I was definitely extremely tired in the late afternoon and I still feel pretty tired now at about 9pm. It may be other factors or it may be that the distance has become significant enough to cause noticeable fatigue. I suppose I shall just have to see what happens during the coming weeks.

Nevertheless, from a mental and spiritual perspective, the jogging is proving to be a wonderful habit. The act of jogging has itself become meditative. I find myself contemplating my future – in a very positive frame of mind – thinking thoughts (some might say prayers) of gratitude and enjoying the changing surroundings. I even found myself – entirely unintentionally – delivering a speech!

As I have resigned from my teaching post (officially as of the end of August, but in all important respects at the end of the Summer term), I will be expected to give a farewell speech to the entire school in the year’s end assembly. Pretty much all staff and pupils are present and it could seem a daunting occasion.

I was amazed at my own eloquence and humour as I delivered this speech to myself (without any prior rehearsal and without any forethought whatsoever). I can scarcely imagine I will be so eloquent on the actual occasion, but if I continue to spontaneously rehearse during my Sunday jogs, who knows?

Given that I’d like to become a better public speaker, I think my jogging could provide a great opportunity to play things through in my head.

In general, I have been amazed at the clarity of my thoughts while jogging. The very act of jogging and the affirmations I recite from time to time during the jog induce a heightened state of positivity. Consequently, I have a lot of interesting thoughts and ideas that I only wish I could retain and come back to later. I think I could use some kind of dictaphone to record some of my thoughts. . .

On a related note, I’ve found a couple of GoogleMap-based websites that allow me to create jogging routes (essentially for the purposes of seeing how far I’ve run). I’m beginning to test these out, but I’m not sure editing previous routes is particularly easy to do. Given that I’m adding more and more diversions to the middle of my route to increase its length, I’d like to be able to insert new waypoints to (or delete old ones in) the middle of a route but I’m not sure if I can do this. The utilities I’ve found so far only appear to enable me to delete points from (and add points to) the end of a previous route.

I’ll hopefully link to the two jogging route utilities I’ve found in the next entry.

Late last year I happened across a free email newsletter, Early To Rise, which I would recommend if you are a self-improvement addict like me. One of the first newsletters I received contained an article detailing Michael Masterson’s daily routine. As the title of the newsletter suggests, Michael starts his day early and one of the first things he does is completes eight 50-yard sprints, resting for thirty seconds between each dash.

For some reason, I decided to try it almost immediately and completed eight sprints that same evening. I enjoyed it so much that I’ve been doing the same each morning ever since. It suits me far better as a routine than distance jogging (despite the fact that I am a better distance-runner than sprinter).

Peculiarly I had no aches or pains whatsoever for the first fortnight, then a week of mild aching and since then I’ve been largely free of aches. I think the aches coincided with a period where I thought it would be best to do some stretches beforehand. I now realise that this is not necessarily a good idea as it is unwise to stretch muscles that are “cold”. As I don’t generally allow myself sufficient time for a sensible warm-up prior to the sprints, I neglect to do any stretches. Instead I allow myself to take it easy on the first 2 sprints (building up to a sprint fairly slowly) before sprinting nearly flat-out for most of the remaining runs.

It’s a wonderfully refreshing routine and it takes so little time. If I manage to wake before my son (who can be quite noisy and demanding when he first wakes), it also gets me out of bed promptly and feeling wide awake within 10-15 minutes. This is far more satisfying than lying in bed (though I’d have scarcely believed it had I not tried it myself!).

I’ve missed perhaps seven of these session for one reason or another, but have doubled-up on other days to ensure I am averaging the equivalent of at least eight 50-yard sprints per day.

In recent weeks I have introduced an extended jog instead of the sprints approximately once per week. I now intend to schedule it (probably each Sunday) and ensure the distance I am jogging increases eash week. I have no idea as yet of the distance I am jogging, but during my most recent jog I was out for almost exactly half an hour.

Inspired by Steve Pavlina’s 30-day trial concept, I decided to commit myself to the daily sprints and a weekly incremental jog for 30 days as of January 1st. The intention is to do it without fail, though obviously unforeseen circumstances might bring the trial to a halt. That said, even during significant illness, completing the 8 sprints tends to be possible at some point during the day when my energy is high and, judging by past experience, tends to make me feel somewhat better.

Incidentally, if you haven’t discovered Steve Pavlina previously, you won’t know that he’s currently doing a 30-day trial on a severely-restrictive raw vegan diet and has previously used his 30-day trial concept to experiment with polyphasic sleep – adjusting his sleep pattern to six 20-minute naps evenly spaced throughout each 24 hour period (totalling just 2 hours sleep per day!). I find his blog generally interesting, thought-provoking and inspiring so will be prone to mentioning him from time-to-time.

As a pleasant side-effect, since beginning the sprint-regime, the 30 seconds between each run gives me the opportunity to repeat a few affirmations, daydream, collect my thoughts and/or give thought to the coming day. This is thoroughly beneficial in itself but, combined with the feelings of satisfaction that come from completing the routine and being thoroughly alert and positive within 15 minutes of rising, the routine is almost unmissably addictive.

I’ll keep you posted if I lapse from this workout, particularly as I return to work tomorrow morning and I haven’t been rising as early as I’d like. It could prove challenging to make time for exercise before leaving for work!