Hustle, Hustle, and more Hustle

Time flies when you are busy running, baking and playing with kids.  That could best describe the month of January as I cannot believe is already over, I have noticed that life has both sped up and slowed down all at the same time.  Again, allow me to explain…

In an effort to be more productive I needed to go back and follow a schedule for the week with each day laid out, with tasks that I wanted to accomplish.  I found that during January I spent far too much time thinking about what I wanted to get done instead of actually doing things.  The biggest distraction?  Old movies that I have seen far too many times already, and quite frankly I didn’t need to see yet again.  There is something comfortable about an old favorite movie, it just makes you feel good.  We all like to be comfortable, but to live an extraordinary life you need to push beyond what is comfortable and really challenge yourself.

I’ve done my best to place that mindset into my head for the month of February, as I have set for myself some Wildly Important Goals!  I created my own online baking company, as advertised below with a focus only on Valentine’s Day options, to be honest sales have been pretty much non existent to this point while I remain optimistic that as inch closer to February 14th sales will increase.  The website only featured options for the Holiday directly ahead, I have over 170 different Cookie Cutters (Thanks Amazon!) and wanted to offer options for the entire year.  I believe the biggest opportunity for sales growth will come from word of mouth, and one event will lead to three more, etc…

The biggest season in my old world, the restaurant business was Communion, Baptism season at the Keg (next to Christmas) all that is quickly approaching.  So I want to have pages dedicated to these cookies with wonderfully decorated cookies already laid out for potential customers to view, to plant the seed for future purchases.  I spent much of yesterday, and most of today dedicated to that task!  I have an old colleague that is having a baby shower this weekend and I am going to surprise her with some Baby Shower themed cookies, both for the website (pictures) and word of mouth advertising.

The other half of the hustle, hustle, hustle equation is my triathlon training plan alongside the 100 Day running challenge.  So the month of January is in the rearview mirror and I successfully ran all 31 days, putting my total at over 200 kilometers for the month that comes with a great sense of accomplishment.  I have learned so much about myself, about how to be a more effective runner, how mental discipline plays into all this, and what drive and determination can accomplish.

The month of February comes with another 28 runs in which the run total will push past 50i n a row, it’s more base building where I am basically just running and increasing my cardiovascular base for the upcoming Ironman 70.3 race that I will be completing in this coming July.  In March we will start to transition into some specialty training as we get closer to race date and the weather warms up here in Canada.

I have also successfully incorporated strength training into my training plan and so far have really enjoyed the workouts and maybe a bit more so the results.  I can see the changes when I look into the mirror and I like what I see.  I was worried that this additional training would tire me out more so than the cardio workouts themselves, however so far that has not been the case.  My triathlon buddy is a big believer that strength training will help the overall swim, bike and run times out of the course this summer.  I cannot wait…

Well this post has been a bit of a ramble, kind of like where my head has been at recently.  Lot’s going on… and I didn’t even mention that I am going back to work part time starting this Saturday.  Hustle, hustle, and more hustle!