A few years ago my baby turned 1 and I decided that after 5 years of being pregnant or nursing it was time to get my body back.
I started out slowly - by going to the gym and using the elliptical trainer. It was no impact and it was easy - 60 minutes start to finish and I was home before the family was even awake.
And then I saw an article in Outside Magazine about the rising popularity of sprint triathlons and I decided that it would be a good way to up my fitness regimen without upping my time commitment.
I loved the training. I would go to spinning twice a week, swim at 5:30AM twice a week and do a couple of runs. I was in great shape and felt fantastic. I eventually did three sprint triathlons and was very proud of myself.
And then my town underwent budget cutbacks and I became a slob again.
How could the two POSSIBLY be related you ask?
Well as part of the budget cutbacks, the town went to a split elementary school schedule. And our school was chosen to be the early school (so they can stagger the bus routes, thus needing fewer buses.)
So instead of getting up at 6, working out from 6:30-7:30 and getting home in time to put my kids on the bus for 8:30, I now had to get up at 5, workout from 5:30-6:30 and get home in time to put my kids on the bus at 7:30.
And with a full time job and a Blog? Well let's just say that I didn't see 5am very often. Then never.
Suddenly 20 months had by since I'd run and I felt like crap. So I decided to do something about it. I started goign to the gym at 9pm after the kids had gone to bed - and I felt great.
I had more energy than I'd had in a year. It was self perpetuating - I had so much energy - so I had energy to go to the gym at 9pm. It was great.
And then it was summer and I was running outside after work and I loved it.
And then it started getting darker earlier and I was travelling more often and suddenly it was harder to squeeze in a run during the day because by the time work was done, it was dark.
But the truth is that I CAN squeeze in a run here and there, I just need to make it a priority.
Over Christmas break I took a look at my runkeeper stats from last year...
I ran 366 miles last year over 76.5 hours and burned 38,000 calories. That's pretty good considering I wasn't even trying.
And since you know that I MAY be a little OCD about numbers, this year I decided to set a goal.
600 MILES! That's 12 miles/week for the whole year!!!
And then I remembered that it snows in Boston - sometimes it snows A LOT. And I'm old. And sometimes my hip hurts. And sometimes I like to go on vacation and so on.
In short, sometimes life gets in the way of our workouts - and we workout to make life more enjoyable so I'm not going to set an unattainable goal and then feel bad when I choose to live my life rather than try to hit 600 miles.
So I lowered my goal to 500 miles. (That's a much more OCD-number anyway - at least for me.)
And then I created a Facebook group and invited people to join me...
So will you? Run 500 miles with me this year? Or whatever number makes sense for you...
Don't set the goal too high that it stops being fun and don't set it so low that you're done by September.
And use the Facebook page as your brag book...
And use the #IWouldRun500Miles hashtag to tell me all about it on Twitter.
You can do this!
PS I'm in Amsterdam right now and some handy calculator just converted miles to kilometers for me. 500 mile is 804km. I'm so glad I only have to run 500! ;)
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