Logging: It's Not Just for Lumberjacks Anymore

Dave at the finish of his first Half Ironman

Here's a press release about my husband: he's going to be a Marathoner.  But for the occasional shout-out & this sappy swoon from a year ago, I try to keep Dave relatively blog-free.  But I'm pretty proud of his 2012 goal--for what it means for him, for what it means for our family & for what it means for me--so I can't help but say that he's pretty awesome & I can't wait to see him cross the finish line come May.  He has wanted to take this plunge for a long time & put it off for me.  Now, he feels like my life is less in the life changing stage & more in the life living stage & he can devote less time to being my safety net & more time to running...running...& a little more running.

When Dave takes on something new, the first thing he does is research.  For a jump-right-in-&-figure-it-out-on-the-fly gal like me, it is maddening.  In the old days he would buy books on the subject.  Now he reads blogs & listens to podcasts.  At least his exhausting exhaustive research has gotten cheaper.  After he soaks up as much knowledge as he can, purging his mind of superfluous details like his own date of birth or our anniversary, he begins the brain dump.  The brain dump is where I get to learn all there is to know on the subject at all hours of the day.  Dinner conversation, my inbox, hushed conversations in the minutes before I'm freed by sleep--all filled with marathon talk.  Wanna know something about marathon training?  Ask me.  I probably know (& no, there is no marathon in my near future). 

Sometimes, along the way, I actually learn something.  In getting my routine squared away, I've started sincerely tracking my food again.  It's not rocket science & yet I frequently "forget" how valuable it is to simply write down my food intake in order to help get it under control.  In Dave's training research, he came across a fellow who is simultaneously zen & pragmatic about training.  Tip #1: keep a training log.  Not just what/how much you did, but how you felt, what you thought about, what worked, what you did differently.  Though telling me about training logs was part of the brain dump, Dave realized that he & I have something in common: we're both working toward a huge long term goal.  So, he bought me a training log (no doubt paid for with the money he saved in doing the rest of his research via free online sources).

Now, in this house, we are logging our workouts & I am logging my food...maybe he should take a page from MY research & log his food?  I don't know, but what I do know is that we're a logging family working toward some pretty big stuff in 2012 & it just makes me want to sing...