Sleep and Exercise

Why did it take me this long to discover the WordPress app??

Genius! Now I can post all my brain vomit, as it’s happening.

My first phone-post will be dedicated to stairs.

I am going to just attribute this to the fact that I’m kind of sick and can’t breathe right as it is, but something startled me just now. I got winded (like really winded) climbing up one flight of stairs. Wtf.

Just a few days ago I climbed like 15 flights of stairs going up a hill in Barcelona, and while I was sweating balls by the end, I felt fine and strong. But today, I’ve felt slow and lethargic and weak and the stairs in my house totally dominated me and I feel pretty lame about that. Normally I make stairs my bitch.

This got me thinking about 2 things:
– sleep
– exercise

(It’s allllllll fuckin’ related, bro!)

Due to 2 weeks of intense travel, my sleep has become continuously more and more deprived, until I reached a breaking point yesterday and I had to excuse myself before dinner time and go to bed before 10 pm, feeling sick and utterly exhausted. My brain was entirely dysfunctional all day yesterday and I felt unable to think straight. My memory was not at it’s best and I had trouble articulating myself all day long. Today hasn’t been much better, even though I slept 9.5 hours last night. I think my sleep deprivation needs several days to be fixed.

Thanks to this, I think I’ve gotten sick and have felt weak all day. Any hope for exercise is basically gone.

Additionally, as I mentioned in another post, I haven’t really exercised in probably 3 weeks (other than walking) and I feel the effects of this immensely. My energy is low and I feel my heart stamina plummeting like a brick. These damn stairs got the best of me, and I hate that.

What can I learn from this shitty feeling?

Sleep is so important. Even without the exercise, if I had slept properly, I probably wouldn’t be sick right now and I probably would be a lot sharper and generally in a better mood.

Exercise NEEDS to be a priority. I so often forget how to do that! When I’m on vacation, I always tell myself “I’ll just wake up early and go for a run or do exercises in the hotel room”… But I never do. Basically, that needs to stop. I need to just do it. Just wake up 30 minutes earlier and go for a quick jog. It might not be as intense as I would normally do, but it’s better than nothing. Especially with all the food I end up eating on vacation, the exercise is even more critical. And I have 10 days to get back into shape for a 10k race next weekend, and I’m afraid I’m not going to be ready, at all. Ugh.

So, tomorrow, I will exercise before work. I need to. I will be going for a 4-mile run and if I don’t, I give you all permission to punish me by forcing me to eat broccoli. (Which I detest.)