Swell Fitness: I Walked and Walked and Walked

The date on my last post was August of 2011. I miss writing, but my focus has been on my outside jobs for the past almost-year. I'd like to get back into the swing of things, make regular post updates. Today is the first....

Yesterday, I was looking at Pins and I saw one that said something along the lines of  "Tomorrow is June 1st. Start it strong." I somehow lost track of the page that held the pin (dang!), but the idea stuck in my head. I spoke with my girl, Sarah, about getting busy with the fitness and she was game.

Cut to today.... I work a number of jobs. One of them is landscaping at a nearby ranch. My husband is the ranch hand and sometimes I help with the ranch end, rather than the landscaping end. We have an outbreak of Marlahan Mustard in our area. It's an invasive, noxious weed that crowds out the plants that are supposed to be in the area (as in hay or grain). My job was to walk the ranch (it's a good-sized place) with a shovel and cut the plants "crown" off. I did this for 5 hours, walking up and down each field, in close-ish lines, in order to not miss any of the mustard plants. I'm estimating that I walked at least 12.5 miles in that time. With a shovel in my hand. I was walking at a decent pace, but I had to stop and dig the plants out over and over, so it slowed me down a bit. I was so proud of my hard work - heck yeah, I started June strong..... then my husband called me. He said our puppy was lost (I was home, eating lunch), and he needed me to come back to the ranch and help him search for her, plus the cows got out and we needed to move them as well. Ouch.

It took us almost 4 hours, but we finally found her and put the cows back where they belonged. I'm estimating that I walked close to 18 miles throughout both the mustard and puppy searches, but I entered in 15.5 at Daily Mile.com.  I like to be conservative with my mileage estimates, because it's important to me to earn each and every mile.

Okay, so this was a post... maybe not the most exciting, but it's a step in the right direction. Have a great day!

Swell Fitness: National Running Day

Did you know that today, June 2, 2010, is National Running Day?

National Running Day is a national initiative of the major organizations within the running industry to join forces in an unprecedented unified effort to nationally promote running as a healthy, easy, and accessible form of exercise. The second annual National Running Day will be Wednesday, June 2.

Events are being held throughout the US, so click here to find an event near you.

I'm a runner. Up until about 4 years ago, I never thought I would be. Running was something that they made us do every year for the President's Fitness Tests and I hated it.

Then, I had a meeting with a personal trainer and she mentioned that it really would be a good way for me to lose weight and increase my fitness. She mentioned trying to take it slow - run a minute, walk a minute, run a minute, walk a minute. It sounded crazy, but I gave it a try. It worked. It was hard, the minute running felt endless, but eventually I was running for 30 minutes or more. The fitness came pretty quickly - my brain might question every run, might say, "Hey, I don't really want to do this," but my body loves it.

I have found that I do better when I break my run into smaller increments, loops around an area that is smallish. Or I make it seem like play - run in the rain, run down a hill - anything that reminds me of being a kid and running while playing tag or hide & go seek.