I think it was in Burn After Reading, but for some reason I remember George Clooney’s character saying that if he doesn’t get in exercise every 3 days, he makes sure that he does. For something like exercise, I think this is a great way to think about it, although when it comes to something that has a bit more intensity, in my case swimming, less than three days seems appropriate.

This week I reached the 10k mark in the pool for the first time in a long time. I was thinking of ways to productively relieve stress, these past few weeks have been pretty bad, nothing in particular just a mixture of everything, so I kinda went a bit hard at the pool. I think this is normal for most anaerobic exercise, but I find that if I keep regularly swimming, I can get a pretty good pace. However, if I stop for say a month or so, my pace completely resets to zero, and I have to start again. That’s why it’s important to keep up a regular habit.

It helps to choose an appropriate amount of time whereby if you do not exercise, you have to force yourself to do so. Even better if you can decide what that exercise would look like in advance. I’ve talked about it before, but if I’m coming back to the pool after an extended period of time, I work of percentages of pace, so that I’m not deterred by my times. I find this works great until I am able to get back up to a reasonable pace, and after about a month and a half at it, I finally feel that I’m back there, and that means I was able to swim 10k this week.