Exercise

Exercise is one of those words that should be added to a list of bad words. But it's a necessity. Over the years I've had people say 'oh you should job 4 miles a day' or 'do some sit ups' or whatever. For the most part I've ignored the statements because plain and simple, I can't. I'm not one of those active outdoorsy types who put on short shorts and run for days or participate in a billion sports. Never have been, never will be. I've also found gym memberships to be useless. If they work for you, that's awesome. Personally, I find that I feel like I'm being judged and I also easily find excuses not to go. That said, I went to our local Walmart and spent almost $300 to get a nice new treadmill. It's not 'top of the line' by any means. But it works, it holds my weight and I can walk on it.

I started on February 1st walking 1 mile a day. That first day my mile clocked in at 25 minutes. Over the course of the next 2 weeks I increased my speed until I was walking anywhere from 2.5-2.7 mph and doing the mile in 23:08. On February 18th I added a pair of 2 pound weighted gloves to the mix, really getting my arms into the walk. I've had to slow down just the 2.5 mph, but my legs work harder to keep me walking straight and I feel like I've gotten an overall better walk in. All this has been cronicled on my Facebook and I'll start doing so here as well. With the addition of the gloves I have gone from walking the full mile with no breaks to having to pause in the middle and catch my breath again. I hope next week I can do the full mile again. And once I'm able to do that I will start planning to walk further.

I realize that walking 1 mile is no huge accomplishment. But as I said in my rules, any exercise is better than no exercise. And everyone has to start somewhere. This is my start. In 24 days I have not missed walking a single day. That's progress in my eyes and I plan to keep it up. Hopefully in a week or two I can add a quarter mile to my walk and keep adding from there.

When I added the gloves on the 18th I clocked in at 24:03 and did on the 19th & 20th as well. For the last 4 days I've come in at 24:02. My best time was 23:06 on the 10th & 12th. But I will take the minute difference in favor of what feels like a harder better workout.