One Challenge Down, One More To Go

While I was on cloud nine from hitting my milestone yesterday I signed up for the A Merry Life Challenge. Essentially the challenge was to pledge 30 seconds to every comment against her posting in which she was asking people to help her get motivated and back to the gym. Needless to say she’s a fun and informative blogger with a lot of followers. Add to that the fact that things like this tend to spread like wildfire and you have the perfect fitness storm.

At the time commenting closed yesterday at 2:30pm CST she had managed 180 comments, gulp. That’s 90 minutes doing the exercise of your choice which was about 40 minutes longer than most of my cardio sessions. This means I was essentially committing to doing two back to back cardio sessions in one sitting.

The great thing was that it wasn’t even just me signing up, it ended up motivating all of these people as well:

• Mary
• Steve
• Jen
• Lauren
• Josie
• Tina
• Tania
• Meegan
• Kepa
• DCKate
• Beej
• Jodi
• Andrew
• Shelli
• Amber
• Jess
• Sean (That’s me)
• Karen
• Kat
• Lynne
• Michelle
• Lynn
• Gina
• Rachel
• Mary’s Mom

Pretty amazing isn’t it? I don’t know that this is the complete list, I snatched this list from Steve’s site. I’ll update the list later when if the complete one is posted.

Early Morning

Rather than delay the pledged time to the weekend I decided that I’d skip my usual day off (Thursday) and instead throw 90 minutes of elliptical onto the fire before work. In order to pull that off I had to wake up at 4am to make it to the gym in time so I could catch my 7:40 train. I’ve never gotten up that early for any exercise … 5:30am no problem but 4:00am, yikes.

I’m fortunate (or unfortunate I don’t know) to have a new son that needs to be fed by his mom every 3 hours. It just so happened that his last feeding was around 3 am and I wasn’t able to fall back asleep so I was plenty awake at 4 am and ready to rock.

After dragging my butt to the gym I managed a pretty solid workout with a few pictures as proof to boot. As you can see I needed two pictures because the elliptical machine I was on reset after 60 minutes. Fortunately I had a feeling it would so I brought my camera to capture the screen just before the rollover.

In all I burned 1372 calories and traveled 6.61 miles during the workout. Not to shabby for a last minute challenge. I hope everyone else did just as well and can’t wait to see the summary.

Weekend Warrior Challenge

It’s that time again, time for another Weekend Warrior Challenge but this time it’s theme is The Empire Strikes Back. The gist of this challenge is once a month, usually the first weekend, get a bunch of people together to help them start fresh with a solid weekend of goals and accountability to everyone involved.

Since I’m a glutton for punishment and love me a challenge I’m participating and here are my goals for the weekend:

1. Get my bike out for the season and get at least a 10 mile ride in. Assuming it doesn’t need any work to maintain it that is.
2. Eat clean this weekend without letting my free meal on Friday night spill into the weekend.
3. Cook a new recipe including Squash and cook my meals for the week to get and stay ahead.

I don’t know if these are to loose of goals for the weekend or not, comments? Last challenge I set some running goals I wasn’t able to attain. I don’t want a repeat of that so that’s why I put this cycling goal on this time around. I’ll adjust the goal if the bike is out of service.

Friendly Reminder

I wanted to remind folks, if they haven’t already done so, to hop over to sign up for my first ever giveaway. I’m giving away signed copies of these David Grotto books:

• 101 Optimal Life Foods
• 101 Foods That Could Save Your Life

All you have to do is drop a comment before midnight Friday to enter for a chance to win one of them.

• Another Week Another Weigh In
• Is My 2 Week Weight Loss Goal Reachable?
• Sumo Marathoner Should Have Received DNF
• Why I Love Bicycling
• Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.