My Journey With Health And Fitness – Let The Challenge Begin

Ok, I am seriously running out of time. For some reason this year my December social calendar is incredibly busy. It has gotten so bad I have decided I just can’t add anything to it. Sunday my sister and I completed our whiteboard calendar with everything we have to do over the next 4 weeks and it is crazy. Still trying to figure out when I will be getting my Xmas baking done. I can’t wait to start erasing things off the to do list!

Yesterday the 31km Winter Kilometers Challenge in December started. It is, of course, to raise money for the Heart and Stroke Foundation and I am doing it in memory of my lil’ bro’. Again, the goal is to walk 31km during the month of December. As you all know, that goal is a joke to me (I would have it done by tomorrow) so I changed my challenge not just walking 300km but now I have upped the ante to have all the walking done by December 15th. It is a bit of a lofty goal but setting it this high makes it a real challenge for me.

Obviously, given that it was December 1st, the challenge has started. I was lucky the weather cooperated with me (I fear the weather will be the biggest challenge) and I got through 2, 2 hour walks putting me at 20km for the day. That’s when it hit me, I can do more! And so later in the day I headed out for 1 last hour long walk getting me up to 25km. Once I did that was when I decided let’s put a cutoff date to reaching the 300km mark realizing, due to the social calendar, that some strategy will be involved.

Over the next 10 days I will need to average 25km/day which will be tough but I think I can do it. The difficulty comes in trying to fit everything else around walking 5 hours/day (oh, and of course an hour at the fitness centre). I have found at least 1 day where I just simply won’t be able to dedicate that much time hence my decision to toss in a few 30km days, tomorrow is going to be one of those days. I acknowledge that is going to stretch me a bit but if I break it into doable intervals I should be ok.

I just want to note, when I hit 300km it does not in anyway mean I quit walking for the rest of the month. Instead it means I fit in as much as possible but without the pressure of having to walk so much every day. Wish me luck!