When was the last time you exercised?

Be honest with yourself - do you exercise regularly?

And enough?

Exercise not only allows you to eat bagels while you write or to have a late-night chocolate cheesecake milkshake (ok the jury is still out on whether my exercise this week was enough for that one...and the half of the Reuben I had beforehand, but nobody apart from us has to know ;) ) without looking like the Michelin man by the time you hand in your thesis.

The reason I'm writing about exercise is that a lot of people I know (and that definitely includes me) tend to stop exercising enough when the deadlines are piling up. It always seems like such a good idea to not spend that hour running or swimming( or whatever you like to do) and to spend it working on that abstract/paper/chapter...the list is endless. But every single time I do that I regret it afterwards. You simply can't work for 15 hours straight without giving your mind some breaks to unwind (at least I have failed every single time I tried, if you have a secret to success for that one, please tell us about it!!!) so why not get that exercise and get your blood pumping.

I feel a lot more balanced when I get my daily dose of endorphins, at the moment running is my drug of choice (I love running on the UT campus when it's just getting dark, I think some of the people that I have run past 3 times on my runs - I found this nice route that takes me 1 hour if I run it 3 times - might think I'm crazy but normally by the time I run past them I have a huge smile on my face because I feel like I'm leaving all the stress and all the things that were bothering me beforehand behind so at least they'll think I'm a happy crazy person :)

Anyhow, what forms of exercise do you like to do?

Here is some nice links for videos/podcasts to get you moving:

I got into running while finishing up my 4th year project doing the Cool Runnings Couch to 5k thing.
Robert's podcast is the one that got me through way too many all-nighters back then.
Then I moved on to a Hip Hop one which is ok, especially because there is some seriously cheesy music on there, but for some of the weeks the songs are a bit offensive (some of the weeks it's pure genius though...so proceed with caution...)
And then I found this one :
Chubby Jones Couch to 5k Podcast (Mia is awesome).

I also like the free weekly yoga class at Yoga Today.

And finally, if you can understand German (though it's dubbed so if you zone out the really annoying German voice you can still hear the original) I found a mix of David Kirsch exercises at Brigitte Online - if you're interested in his stuff that will save you the $39 that his actual videos will cost you (if you are thinking of getting his actual videos and would only watch a DVD on your laptop like I would - you can download (you still have to pay though...) the workout videos from the David Kirsch website.

Right, I better get started on my writing for today. I shall leave you with a David Kirsch quote for when you are struggling the next time and you keep coming up with 1 million excuses about why you can't write right now:

'And your point is?'

I hope you have a lovely day/evening and keep up the good work!!!!!