Missed Opportunity for exercise.

There are many opportunities to get in exercise. I have a lot of neighbors and people I know that like to hire out everything. While I'm thankful that there are people who hire myself and my husband do to some of their home- work, I often think that they are missing out on opportunities to get in some exercise. It's a win-win, you save on money by doing it yourself, get self satisfaction of completing a job and you get the benefits of exercise. How hard is it to mow the lawn? Paint a deck? Wash the windows? Clean your home? Some people just don't have the time. Working 40 hours a week, driving kids to activities,  and there is laundry, dinners to make, dishes to clean up, bills to pay and a having a little down time. A lot to fit into our day and hiring out some household jobs for some, reduces stress in their lives from having to do it all. We all know too much stress it's good either.  Luckily, Steve and I have the time to do all ourselves. For us, it is our stress relief! 

When it came time to paint the deck, we got to working.. Sure its a big job, but doing it together it was therapeutic. Just painting away the time went by quickly. We pretty much finished the first coat of paint on all the stairs and rails. I have no idea of how many calories I burned in the 3+ hours I was painting but I got a good arm workout. The first coat always takes the longest and the 2nd coat should take half the time. It sure feels good to do this ourselves. It sure doesn't seem like hard work when you do it together. Plus, I get exercise without having to go for a run, bike or head to the gym to lift weights. Painting provided a 3+ hour workout.. slow and steady.. burning the calories for a longer time then I would have spent doing anything else. 

Another miss opportunity for exercise I just read about this to help my speed. Its just plain old jumping. Jumping in place, jumping rope, box jumping and one foot hopping. I really need to try adding some jumping into my daily exercises. 30 seconds to start and I'll keep adding more time. 

After all this deck painting.. I needed some downtime. Finally got around to reading my new book after finishing The Orphan train. I do hate finishing books.. Its a real let down but glad I had a book in waiting to read. Reading is my favorite way to spend some much needed down time after a good afternoon nap. It takes a lot out of me working out, working and doing projects around the house. 

I'm not sure this will be a running morning. I'm waiting for the thunder storm to pass and the sun to come out. I didn't run yesterday. It's not exactly a great plan for running a half marathon in a week to skip any of my morning running. My training plan has been to just run and that's about it. No specific distance or speed. Just running the same route, over and over with a little soccer speed work, my normal hilly route is all the training I've gotten. My only long distance is the 10 miler I did a few weeks ago other then that, I run 4 to 6 miles per day on most days. That should be good enough to finish 13+ miles. If I was running a full marathon, I surly would be doing more long runs on a regular basis.. but I'm not going that distance and not sure I ever want to. 13 miles is good enough of a challenge. I just want to finish feeling good.. not like I'm going to pass out from lack of food and water. I did missed some opportunities to run longer distances to train, but I have a solid base of consistent running at least 5 to 6 days a week.. I should be worried about the race distance.