Tuesday, August 05, 2008

New Personal Goals

It feels awesome to set a goal and achieve it... really! I have totally changed the way I think about setting short term goals since finishing my marathon in under 5 hours. Before my last race, I was convinced that there was no way I could improve my marathon time by almost 2 hours. It just seemed like too big of a goal at times and I almost considered settling for "anytime under my last marathon time" as the goal instead. However, I figured that if I didn't try to do it, I'd never know. Therefore, I tried and (to my surprise) I succeeded. At this point, anything seems possible.

Since my race, I've been thinking about my new goals and what I want (really want) to achieve next. My "big picture" goal is to be happy; isn't that everybody's goal? I know that in order to be happy, I need to focus on the things that make me happy. Things that make me happy are (in order) my family, running, coding, drumming, and everything outdoors. Some of the happiest memories I have from my early years with Jennifer were when we had no money, no TV, no internet, a $100 thrown together beaten down drum set, a roof over our heads, and each other. I want to teach my girls that happiness is not a material thing, and I plan to do that by being my own student. This new hobby of mine (ie. running) has taught me that the word comfortable is not analogous to happy. By this I mean that sweating, cramping, cringing in pain, and sore muscles wind up giving me long-term happiness in the end. Watching TV, eating crap food, and lounging around in the air conditioning (ie. being comfortable) does not give me long term happiness; rather it's a quick fix to immediate satisfaction and ends up making me feel like crap at the end of the day. I know this because it's more or less how I've lived my life the last few years.

My new plan is to focus on eliminating all the things that make me unhappy. For example, one thing that makes me unhappy is that I'm no longer able to perform basic physical tasks that my body was intended to perform. Right now, I can run for 5 hours strait with proper fuel and hydration. However, I can only do about 3 (good-form) chin-ups, 1 (good-form) shoulder width pull-up, 20 (good-form) push-ups, and 100 (good-form) sit-ups before needing a break. When I was 19, I could do all of these things until the cows came home, but I've since lost this ability. I have decided that I'm going to fix this problem. :)

My new short term goals are as follows:
Something I'd like to start looking into next spring is rock climbing. However, the fact that I struggle to pull my 200 lbs body up with my arms leads me to believe that I have a little bit of work to do before looking into that. :) I've accepted the fact that my weight is here to stay, so I'm going to offset this with physical strength.

So these are my goals. I've posted them for all to see in hopes that it helps me commit to these goals (like my 5 hour marathon goal post). When you see me, ask me how I'm doing on them, as I may need kicked from time to time. :)

11 comments:

Running 2 Mohican said...

Great goals my friend!

Jamie Anderson said...

Great post, Luc. Really liked your introspection on comfort. Totally agree! Awesome goals... I may have to look into that 100 pushups one. I doubt I could do 10!

Luc said...

Rob & Jamie - Thanks for the comments. My 100 push up training begins next Monday. I've discovered that I'm at a 'Level 3' status as I could do 18 good-form pushups before my arms began to shake and burn profusely. :) They are just starting to loosen up again.

To everyone else - I've had a lot of feedback via email on this post, and I'm amazed at how many people still read my blog. :) Please feel free to post your comments here as well for all to see... Remember you can always comment as 'Anonymous' if that is your main concern.

Thanks for reading my ramblings!

Mr. Abakumoff said...

Just tried and did 50 push ups...Seems that it's not really hard to do 100 ones??

Luc said...

Here is a good link for you Sergey: How many sissy pushups equal one pushup?

:)

Mr. Abakumoff said...

okay, if I arrive to US or you arrive to Russia next time, then you might want to demonstrate me the real push ups :D

Anonymous said...

what about 1 million sissy pushups training? B)

Igor

Anonymous said...

I think mr. abakumoff mixed up pushups and hiccups :ROFL:

now the questions are "what's a sissy hiccup?" and "how many sissy hiccups are equal to one hiccup?" :LOL:

Igor

Mr. Abakumoff said...

Guys, you see that IgorI aka: "Bala-bul" proves his nick name :) I hope this is not very annoying for you, Lucas.

Luc said...

Not at all. :) One million hiccups would be impressive too I guess... :P

Mr. Abakumoff said...

"American man Charles Osborne had the hiccups for 68 years, from 1922 to 1990, and was entered in the Guinness World Records as the man with the Longest Attack of Hiccups."