Biking has been very good for me. I don't mind the distance much, and I work hard enough to feel it, but not so hard that I'm debilitating myself along the way.
Lifting has also been good for me, in the past. I like lifting. The feeling of hefting a previously unhefted amount of steel overhead is pretty damn awesome. But here, I push too hard and get hurt. Still, it's good for me, if I can just find a way to keep it in check a little bit so that I don't injure myself.
I have a desire for fitness, but I find I haven't got a real motivating force. I can motivate myself by simply pushing myself to do stuff, but that wears thin after a couple of weeks. I need some external motivator to push me, or I need something internal. A reason to keep at it.
So far, finding that reason has been impossible. And, while external motivation is good, it relies on whatever external factor is motivating to stay there constantly. That's tiring for any person to do, and most external situations are temporary.
Goals help, but I find that I'm either too lofty, or not lofty enough when selecting them. Almost always, I end up on the too lofty side.
For biking, I have my external goal. Montreal. 65+ km per day. That's a real, driving force for me. I want to do it. I can do it. I just need to be out there on the bike and ride. And it's worked so far. When I get really serious about it, it'll work even better.
But for all the rest, diet, lifting, running, I don't have a goal. There's no external force that'll remind me that if I don't do the training, I'll never get to enjoy the rewards.
I've thought about signing up for a race. A small one. 5K, maybe. And train for that. But, I don't really want to run a race. I don't want to have to push myself to do 5K, just so that I can come in not-exactly-last. It's not a good motivator for me.
For lifting, I've thought about entering a competition, or pretending to enter one. But, it hasn't helped. I don't think I've got the time or ability to really get into any sort of competition shape.
There's always the idea of a fitness/fatness bet with the guys... but there's no nice way to bring that up, and we're all in such different points in our fitness that there's no way to make the competition even and comparable. I doubt that anyone other than Athalos would even take up the challenge. A two person challenge isn't bad, but I already feel like I'm way behind Athalos in terms of fitness. I'm not sure that it would be a good challenge overall - I'd be very likely to push a bit too hard.
I suppose I could set goals for myself again. But I'm not sure where to start with those right now. My current mindset has been to ignore the weight, and worry about the fitness. If I eat better, and do more physical stuff, the weight will sort itself out.
That's probably a good thing for me, so that I'm not obsessing over calorie counts. Besides, right now, I really don't want to have to restrict myself too much. I know, it goes against the idea of becoming fitter - but as I said, I'm just not sure which way I'm headed with things right now. For a goal to work, it has to be useful. And I can't think of any useful goals with lifting at the moment - other than setting up a target weight and working towards that. Which I probably should be doing anyway.
I suppose that for the moment, I should be looking to make hitting the gym a habit. Past that, everything else will come in its own time.
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