Starting 2026 Right

 

I have been more active in the past week than I have been in a while. On New Years Day, Chad and I went to the local state park and walked the trail across the dam and back. It was about 2.5 miles, and it wore me out. A few days later, we went to a Colorado Mammoth game and had to park fairly far back (most people do), so we had to walk quickly into the stadium. It was chilly after, so I quickly walked back to the car. The lower half of my body was so sore that I struggled to sleep that night. The way my body reacted to these perfectly normal events was incredibly discouraging and made me double think my goal of running a 10K on Memorial Day. Is there even a chance for me to get in shape enough to reach this goal? Yes. I just need to put in the effort. 

I am doing a few things to reach this goal. First, I am tracking my steps and increasing my step count goals. This week, my goal is embarrassingly small, but it is actually higher than my average since I have been working from home. I am not going to look back at where I was in 2019 when I was working in an office. I am going to look and what I can and am accomplishing. Right now, my goal is to hit at least 3,000 steps a day. It will go up to 4,000 steps next week, 5,000 the following week, and so on until I am comfortable with a step goal that both challenges me and is not so high that it is impossible. Second, I am getting to the gym to do strength training and go on the treadmill or elliptical. I would prefer to run/walk on the treadmill, but if they are all taken as they were yesterday, I will do speed drills on the elliptical (one of the preloaded options available). I believe that doing these things consistently, I will become a stronger runner and may possible do better than I did before I started getting injured. Could I possibly have less injuries, too? One can only hope. 

The speed drill I did yesterday were fun. I started with a 3-minute warm up followed by intervals of 30 second sprints and 90 second cool downs. There were 8 intervals. The first two were at a 3 resistance setting, the next two were at a 4, and the last two were at a 6. During each sprint, the machine measure my "sweat score." The higher the number the better. The goal was to get a higher score each time. I was successful until the last one. At the end, I felt like I had a good work out.