Fitness Challenge: My First Tiny Progress Report

Since I had such incredible success getting back into the writing habit by blogging about it (it appears that nothing is as motivating for me as saying publicly, this is my daily goal – and no, I don’t want to think about what this says about me), I foresee great things resulting from my participation in the 100-Mile Fitness Challenge.

However, since Ms. Bookish is a blog about writing and reading and books, I don’t really want to post daily about my fitness progress. So I’ll write an update every few weeks (or so – knowing me, you can probably count on it being more the “or so”), but in order to publicly track my progress and keep myself accountable, I’ve added a progress meter to the outer right-hand sidebar, and I’ll keep that updated daily (I hope).

Despite signing up on Saturday, I “officially” started yesterday. I have now stuck with the challenge for two days straight (is that cheering I hear in the distance? It is! It is! Faint, but it’s there). Here are my observations so far:

1. My treadmill actually measures the distance in miles rather than kilometres, according to my daughter, who uses it almost daily. As she put it, “Mom, if it took you 17 minutes to do a kilometre, even just walking, that’s pretty pathetic. Trust me, you’re not that pathetic. It’s in miles.”

(Ah, teenagers. Don’t you just love them?)

So needless to say, I was thrilled that what I thought was a very long-drawn out kilometre was actually one whole mile.

2. There’s definitely a bit of unfairness to this whole running/walking on the treadmill thing. Running takes more effort and exertion, but I find I run at the same speed as I walk, so the extra exertion isn’t reflected in the actual distance measured.

And no, the solution is not to run faster than I’m walking, as my dear husband suggested. See, he works out all the time and to him a mile is piffle-snuff. I make it a practice never to listen to his physical fitness suggestions because they are just highly unrealistic from my point of view.

The real solution is to grin and bear that tiny bit of unfairness and don’t give in to the temptation to not run at all.

3. My initial goal will be to run the entire mile, instead of running for part of it and then walking. After I accomplish that goal, I will look at increasing my speed. Eventually I’d like to be running 1.5 to 2 miles each session, about four times a week.

4. When you get your lungs in condition, they seem to stay in condition. Leg muscles, on the other hand, appear to require continuous help on your part.

When I first took up running about ten years ago, I remember my lungs burning so badly I had to stop. My legs, on the other hand, could have kept on going. (If you’re wondering why I stopped running, feel free to blame it on my youngest, who came along six years ago.)

This time around, my breathing is easy (according to my husband, this means I’m not running fast enough, but have I mentioned, I never listen to him when it comes to stuff like this?). My leg muscles, on the other hand, have turned all wimpy on me.

5. The moment you finish running, and go flop on the bed, is really quite an exquisite moment. I swear, I feel like I’ve just had a massage. It’s lovely. I just wish the running itself felt like getting a massage.

6. Two days obviously isn’t enough to have any visible effect on my writer’s spread (actually, mine is more of a writer’s and reader’s spread). But I can’t help doing what my son did when he first started weight lifting (which was to keep asking everyone, how come I’m not seeing any muscles yet?) My version of this is continually patting my tummy and feeling disappointed that there’s no apparent difference in, um, squishiness.

If I can keep this up for 30 days, I know I’ll be able to stick with it and complete the challenge. So hold me accountable, everyone – I’m relying on you!

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