My Journey With Health And Fitness – Challenging Myself

Well we have certainly gotten lucky here, the weather is supposed to be awesome for at least the next week. This is very unusual for the west coast of BC in that normally we have rain the entire month of November. Not this year, it is supposed to be really sunny. The downside is it is not going to be warm first thing in the morning which makes it even more important for me to layer up. Of course that means nothing I wear actually matches but what the hell.

Since I got home from Mexico more than a month ago I have been committed to challenging myself more and more. Sometimes it is simple things like when the trainer says to do 10-12 reps I opt to do 12. Or the other day when the trainer said to try and use a weight heavier than you think you should and I did and actually got through all of the exercises. I’ll say for that particular class it was often hard but I realized I could stretch myself even more.

However, I have also been pushing other things in class. For example when an easier modification is offered for an exercise I take the harder method (note, this does not include anything involving kneeling for which I always do the modification because of my bad knee). I have even started doing all the higher level cardio work some of which before Mexico I didn’t think I could do.

Today I realized just how committed to challenging myself I have become. After bootcamp class I wanted to hit the road for 2.5 hours of walking (a luncheon and other commitments were going to take up the rest of my day). I decided to start out with an 5k run so off I went. After I hit the 5k mark I thought let’s do a bit more and get to 6k. Somehow I just kept going and the next thing I knew I had just run 8k which I haven’t done in a while. You know what, I am more than in shape to do that kind of run. I’ve decided I am even going to try it again tomorrow.

Challenging myself is just another tool I am using to stay motivated and on track and it seems to be working. Oh, that and the fact that all my clothes fit again and some are even a little loose. So I say, bring it on, I plan to just keep going.