30-day Fitness Challenge

I just started a new fitness challenge involving a combination of running & hot yoga. It was totally unplanned, and it's not an actual structured challenge...but somehow I found myself jumping into a hardcore (at least for me) fitness commitment. Does that ever happen to you? You're busy with life, not doing a good job of working out or eating healthy or whatever, then - boom! - without even thinking much about it, your life suddenly seems to be revolving around a whole new routine?

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Bryan has run several marathons (and longer!) in the past, but he's never been very consistent or structured with his training. He has another marathon coming up in October, and this time he actually decided to follow a training plan that has him running 6 days a week. I haven't been doing a good job of working out lately, so after watching him run so much, I started feeling like I seriously needed to get my butt off the couch.

I always use RunKeeper when I run and thought I might try out one of the free training plans on there (the app is free and there are a few free training plans, although most of them have a fee). After debating between picking a plan that would help me increase my 10k pace and shooting for something longer, I decided to sign up for the beginner half marathon plan. Not gonna lie - I'm nervous about it. Will my knees be able to handle it? I don't know. But a half marathon is something I'd love to accomplish, and now seemed like as good a time as ever to try. The plan also seemed doable - 4 days a week, with 3 shorter runs (3-4 miles initially, up to 5 miles later) and 1 long run (starting at 5 miles then gradually increasing up to 13 miles over 16 weeks). For the first month, it's all distances I know I can handle, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

Shortly after I decided to start the running plan, I saw a LivingSocial deal for a Bikram yoga studio that's super close to my house & office - $29 for 20 classes. That's a pretty amazing deal to begin with, but it gets even better - Living Social had a coupon code for $10 off and I had a $10 bonus sitting in my account. That means I could get 20 hot yoga classes for $9! If I were to buy a package of 20 classes at this place, it would be $300!! How could I pass that up?!

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But there was one catch - all 20 classes needed to be redeemed within 30 days. That would normally be a pretty big commitment for me, even if I wasn't planning on running too! Of course, at that price, it would be logical to buy the deal and not use all the classes, but why let them go to waste? Instead, I decided to take it on as a challenge - complete all the yoga classes in 30 days while sticking to the running plan during that period too. Here's my challenge by the numbers:

• # of days: 30
• # of hot yoga classes: 20
• # of hours of yoga: 30
• # of runs: 18
• # of miles to run: 71
• # of total workouts: 38

Yikes, that's a lot for me! And I jumped into this with bad timing too - I could have started either a day earlier or 2 days later to avoid our anniversary or Bryan's birthday. But since I refuse to work out on those celebratory days, it gives me only 28 days to squeeze in all of those workouts. Eek!

I don't plan on sticking to this calendar exactly, but I thought I needed one to help me keep on track. So far, so good... I've already made it through the first week, so here's hoping I can stick it out through the next three!

Are you working on any new fitness goals lately?