Day Six Hundred and Eleven - Making the Most of My Time

Since I run for forty minutes to an hour each day, I naturally like to listen to something while I'm making my figure eights through the neighborhood.  For a long time now, I have been listening to some really upbeat music.  I'm not huge on foul language in music, so I brought out all of my old Toby Mac albums and have been rocking it out since last summer.  For a little while now I've been feeling like I should find something better to listen to so that I'm not wasting an hour each day.  I figured the best way to do this was to start listening to podcasts and/or audio books.

Since the Apple Watch won't natively play podcasts (come on Apple!), I had to search for a third party app. I found an app called Outcast.  While it still isn't perfect, it does what I need it to do.  I have two podcasts that I'm currently listening to on a regular basis.  The first is Al Mohler's The Briefing.  It's a daily analysis of news and events given from a Christian world view.  I appreciate his perspective for what is happening around the world.  That is a brief, twenty-two minutes per episode, so I usually double up two days in one run.  The other podcast I listen to is Jocko Willink's Podcast.  It is so inspiring to listen to Jocko interview people or read through books that are all about people going hard.  The most recent three episodes were very hard to listen to, but were some of the most inspiring things I have ever listened to in my life.  These are really long podcasts (sometimes over four hours for a single episode).  It is really awesome how much I learn and how much better I feel when I know I'm not losing forty to sixty minutes out of my day when I run.  (Disclaimer: The language on the Jocko Podcast can be pretty harsh at times, depending on the book or who he is interviewing).  What are some things you listen to when you run (music, books, podcasts, etc.)?

My food today wasn't very good.  It really wasn't bad until after dinner.  I picked up some milkshakes on the way home for Bekah and the kids, but I ended up drinking half of one.  I need to be more careful.  That milkshake pretty much negated my run.  I put in a full five miles today.  It felt alright.  I really want to get back to my runs feeling great!  I bruised my right heel the other day, so that isn't comfortable.  I may need to take a few days off if I don't noticed an improvement pretty soon.