Exercising – What I am doing

Last week, my friend Kristen asked me what exactly I do when I exercise so I thought it might be a good idea to write it for all of you. Please bear in mind these important facts:

1. I am not a doctor. It is highly recommended that you go see a doctor before you start an exercise regimen.
2. You are not me and our bodies are not the same, nor are our schedules, backgrounds, fitness levels, etc. Please just make sure you’re doing what’s right for you.
3. It took me a while to find what works for me, and I am still open to changing it so know that it’s important to adjust as you go.
4. I’ve never done this before. I am no expert. I don’t secretly know what I’m doing or any of those things. I am just doing it and seeing how it goes.

Ok so with those caveats, we begin. I decided to start exercising on the evening of October 1, 2010. I had already bought nike plus many months before when I’d read about it on Cathy’s site and I’d bought the pouch too. So I just went outside and walked. For all of October, I walked outside, whatever time of day I could and I walked for as long as I could. I experimented with running and walking. I took Nathaniel along most of the time (sometimes Jake was home so I went by myself.) One or two days, Nathaniel was sick so I just walked in my tiny backyard back and forth about 65 times. There was no rhyme or reason. I just did as much as I could every day. The goal was to go out there daily even if for just 15 minutes a day. Here’s the chart from October, you can see I was totally inconsistent.

Towards the end of October, my mom bought me a treadmill, which was the greatest present. Since the day it arrived, I have used the treadmill every single day. I might choose to go out again when the weather is great but honestly I love the treadmill so I have no problem just using it every day. You can see that November was a hard month for me. Most days, I went as fast as I could. Some days I tried to go as far as I could. My knees hurt and I had to go to the doctor who told me I had runners’ knee. I bought a knee thing to wear on the treadmill but it didn’t help that much. Then I finally bought new sneakers and that made all the difference in the world. Happy sneakers meant no knee pain which meant happy Karen. Here’s the chart for November.

for some reason nike’s site won’t show November 30 when I show it in monthly mode. I tried using several browsers and many times so I just give up. In case you think I am hiding something, here’s the entry from November 30. You can also see here that I was pretty slow.

I was pretty frustrated by this point. I couldn’t decide if it was better to go longer or go faster (I still don’t know.) but I knew that I wanted and needed to be consistent. For me, consistency is continually the key to success. So I decided that for December I would walk 2.5 miles every day. That was 2 miles of walking and .5 miles of running. I generally do my walking at 3.8 which is pretty reasonable and my running at 4.5 which is slow. But I am still sweaty at the end and it’s a rate I can maintain day after day which is what matters to me. So for December there was one day when I couldn’t do more than 2.3 and I made up for it the next day by doing 2.7 but every other day, I just did my 2.5 miles.

For January, I upped it to 2.6 miles. 2 miles of walking and .6 miles of running. I did it every single day. Even during CHA, I woke up at went to the treadmill at the hotel. It sucked but I did it. That’s the thing with doing it every day, it makes it that much harder to give up.

And here’s February. Now I’m doing 2.7 miles a day. 2 walking .7 running. I didn’t change my speed at all. Just the distance.

And my plan is to increase it monthly until 3.12 (which will be June going at this rate) at which point, I will be doing a 5k daily. The plan for the second half of the year is to increase the walk to run ratio slowly. In June I will be doing 2+1.1 so I will do 1.9+1.2 in July etc. until the end of the year. I might even just do 2+1.1 for two months. We’ll see when I get there.

So here’s the chart so far:

124 consecutive days so far. 58 hours and 40 minutes. About 258 miles. I don’t care about the calories cause it’s almost always wrong since it means I have to adjust my weight constantly.

You should know:
1. I do this every single day because I know that if I stop, I will just stop. I hate exercising and I am doing it so I will not let myself stop. Even if I am tired. Even if I don’t feel like it (I never feel like it!). I am lucky that I haven’t been injured or really ill so far. If I do get there, we’ll figure it out. Until there’s a really really important reason, every single day it shall be.

2. I don’t work out too hard. I am not trying to push my body so that it doesn’t need too much time to heal so that I can do it every single day.

3. I do it around 11-12 most days. It’s the only time that seems to work well for me. I am awake and it’s early enough in the day that I feel a sense of accomplishment for the rest of the day. It’s also officially lunch hour so I don’t feel bad about work.

4. I generally read on my ipad while I walk which is the only time I read in my day and then put my ipod on for the running part. I listen to one song over twice right now and then the running part is over.

5. I’ve been doing this for 124 days and it’s still really really hard. Really hard. It’s hard to get myself to get up and do it. It’s hard to do it. It’s hard to make sure I am reaching my daily goal (2.7 right now). It’s just all hard. But I do it anyway. I just do it. I don’t give myself permission not to. That’s the only way it works for me.

That’s it. I hope that was clear and it helps with any questions you might have had (probably more than you ever wanted to know.) Feel free to ask more.

Please remember this is something I made up for me. Do what’s right for you. (Also, I kindly ask that you do not tell me to not do it daily. I appreciate your kindness and respect your knowledge, but I am not going to consider this option and it doesn’t help me to keep hearing it. So I respectfully ask you to please not say it.)