Cindy recently wrote an article about how she walked for 30 days consecutively. She mentioned that she was inspired by Amy Vetter and how she talked about picking an activity you enjoy and committing to doing that activity every day for 30 days. The important part is that you do it every day whether the duration is long or short, consistency is key.
I took that information to heart and I too wanted to do my own 30-day challenge. I committed to doing 30 days of walking and my only rule was that it could be short but it had to actually be a walk. That means that even when I had an especially active day, I couldn’t just count it as my walk (even if my Fitbit already said 10,000 steps). This was not too hard considering that June is great weather where we live. Though it was pretty hard on a few days when I helped out with my dad’s pool maintenance business and cleaned about 25 pools a day and then still did my walk afterward. But I did it and it felt good!
One thing that really helped me was that I posted to social media every day about my challenge. This commitment helped because I knew that if I gave up, everyone would ask me how my walks were going. It kept me going and it was fun to talk about with many of my friends that saw my posts about it. I even inspired a few friends to start their own challenge too. It was fun and I felt so good about it that I decided to keep going.
So I committed to extending the challenge to 100 days. It was really fun and I can say now that I made it! During the course of the 100 days, I wanted even more of a challenge, so I decided I to take up running. Now let me tell you, I have never quite been a runner, but I do enjoy being active outside. I did do a 6-mile run a few years ago but that’s about the only time I took up running. Now I have tried every type of work out there is, Crossfit, Orange Theory, and the like. You name it I have probably tried it. But there is something about running that makes you feel good. It’s nice to be able to be outside too. So I started running a few days a week and as I built up my stamina I got to the point that I wanted to do a 10K! The 10K I signed up for was called “Race Thru the Redwoods” and although I knew it had a few hills, I had no idea what I was in store for. It was really steep and really hard! But I finished it and my time was better than when I did the 6 miles run a few years ago (and the 10K was longer). So I was really proud of myself for being able to complete the 10K!
I know that I was only able to do the 10K with only one month of training because really I had been training for about 6 with my walking challenge. It may have been walking but it was still training. It felt so good to accomplish something as hard as the 10K and even better that my husband joined me. He finished 10 minutes before me!
I really would like to do a half marathon someday and that is another challenge for another time…
What started as a 30-day challenge for me turned into a 100-day challenge and to my even entering a 10K race.
We talked about setting a challenge or goal for September a few weeks ago. Were you able to set a challenge for yourself? We would love to hear what challenge you chose and how you are doing with it. Email us at [email protected] and let us know!