Its ok to mess up, but not ok to give up!

At the start of the month I was absolutely pumped about exercising. To tell you the truth, I have gotten lazy. It wasn't like that at first. I treated myself for a job well done for including exercise in my life. I would going out with friends and stay out late. A few weekends of staying awake too long turned into three weeks of insomnia. My entire schedule was thrown out the window because I would be awake until 4am. I wish I had a lot of cool adventurous tales about secret espionage and midnight rendezvous... in reality, it was me going to bed at 1:30am staring at the ceiling (and occasionally the clock) hoping to eventually doze off. Most mornings at this new schedule I would wake up somewhere between 10am or 11am feeling like a zombie. Zombies can walk for miles, but they are terrible at the treadmill.

I will not allow myself to give up! I set a goal to match or succeed the 15.75 miles that I completed last month. I am not only doing this for myself, but I am doing this for you. I can't let you down after all the wonderful messages I received. A few of you mentioned that you wanted to start exercising after reading my blog! I was amazed and flattered :)

When things don't go as planned, I started this new thing where I ask myself a few questions like, "What can I do?" or "What am I doing differently now?". I find that if myself simple questions, I can approach a situation differently and hopefully find a solution. So what am I doing about this? I am blogging about it again! I want to feel the same excitement that I had two weeks ago. There are still a few days until January and I've re-arranged my schedule to fit the missing miles.

Miles completed to date: 8.22
Miles left to finish: 7.53 (within 9 days)

This doesn't seem daunting because my goal was to complete 7 miles within 7 days. If you asked me about my progress yesterday, I would have given you an exasperated sigh of defeat. Yesterday morning my complete number of miles was only 5.12 and I still had to walk 10.63 miles before the end of December.

I bit my tongue and worked through my frustration. I factored in the amount of time I would be spending with my family during the holiday, I know my time would be limited. Yesterday I ended up walking 3.10 miles! I needed to complete a larger chunk of miles to make up for lost time. It is difficult enough for me to do light exercise daily, but to triple my routine within the same day is crazy talk! Guess what! Even if I tripled my routine, I still followed rule #2 which is: Don't push yourself. This took a small amount of planning. I, as a recovering insomniac, vowed to wake up early, eat a light breakfast, and walk one and a half miles before noon. Then sometime in the early evening, I would walk another one and a half miles. This is how I completed three miles! Its easy if you make it easy!

It is the day after and I was surprised that my body isn't sore. I am planning on doing this again today and then the rest of the week should be a breeze knowing that I have less miles to cover. Its ok for me to mess up, but its not ok for me to give up! I'll continue walking one mile per day. And to all of you, good luck!