Back around October, I decided to motivate myself to get back into running by joining a virtual race. The basic concept is, you join the race online, run or walk the distance on your own time, enter your workouts to count toward your total, and when you are finished, you get a medal or a t-shirt. In my never-ending over-optimism, I joined a Viking Challenge. Total miles? Oh, a mere 65.3!
Yeah, I have no idea what I was thinking. Well, okay, I was thinking it would push me to start running again so that I could rack up those miles. Instead, I have mostly ignored the challenge, occasionally adding a mile here or there when I worked up the ambition to stroll reluctantly around the neighborhood.
Since I recently started working out again, I really want to finish my miles so I can get my Viking Challenge t-shirt. I have 44.3 miles to go.
Since I’ve had so many brilliant ideas lately, I decided to run with this one (no pun intended): my birthday is in April. I have 6 weeks until my birthday. That means if I walk or jog about 7 miles per week, I will finish the virtual race by my birthday.
When I told my fiance that last night, he said, “That’s only a mile a day!”
He’s right. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it that way. I had instantly ruled it out as impossible, I’m not in good enough shape to handle 7 miles a week, I can’t run or walk that far, blah blah blah. But one mile a day? That sounds really do-able, right?
So my goal for the next 45 days is to walk or jog one mile per day. That won’t be my entire workout, of course, but let’s say I want to weight train tomorrow. Great, weight training is wonderful! And when I’m done, I can do one mile, either outside or with one of my many indoor walking workout DVD’s.
My plan this evening is to hit the treadmill at the gym and try out some easy, slow jogging. I’m too overweight and out of shape to handle anything more than that right now, and that’s okay. I have to start somewhere. I will do the same thing Friday evening and add on a walk around the neighborhood on Sunday.
“One mile a day” is my new motto. Gotta earn my Viking horns!
Sweat & Sparkle 