"Get Off Your Broom"

Amidst all of the other hullabaloo I have going on this Fall, I’m (voluntarily?!) adding one more thing to the pile—working toward better physical fitness. It is really easy to say “I’ll do it when I graduate,” because I really would rather just push everything off that little bitty extra two and a half months.

What a 2003 Marin Larkspur may look like.

Alas, it is not to be. This weekend found me with a second-hand Marin road bike and about 45 miles of cycling. I may as well roll with it. The problem for me to find an exercise activity is that I hate the vast majority of them. I am, however, learning to like a few things, like cycling and yoga. I like mountain biking, but I am not fond of flirting with injury. I hate running. Always have. 

Today I was perusing blogs and found this, a pagan blogger who is “hosting” a fitness challenge for other pagan bloggers. I thought, why the heck not. Let’s make it official. Besides, if this blog is identifiably about nothing else, it at least hits the topics of paganism and doing stuff [outside] pretty regularly, so there’s a bit of cohesiveness.

The Hostess of the challenge, Athenina, is offering up weekly mini-challenges for this, the first one being to take a “before” picture of myself, document my current measurements/weight, make up a plan/goal. Before I list any goals, however, I would like to back the challenge up a week and note the things that I’ve done quite recently to improve things.

Pre-challenge changes of Awesomeness.
- stop eating out casually at school
- bicycle more (45 miles this weekend yesss)
- take the school shuttle less (walk more)
- reduce alcohol consumption (that stuff has calories, evidently)

Here are my measurements:
Bust: 37”
Waist: 31”
Hips: 39”
Thigh: 21.5”
Arm: 10.5”
Weight: 144.2 lbs.(okay, that one hurt a lot more than the measurements did)
Height: 5’8”

Major goals:
See abdominal muscles.
Fit a pesky pair of pants I have.
Do/prepare for a major cycling event (maybe the MS150).
Do Warrior Dash in November.

Things to do immediately:
- No more soda. I’ve been flirting with diet soda lately for the “need caffeine but don’t want to drink regular soda or I’m tired of coffee”. Needs to stop. Coffee or tea only.
- Lots of water. Already do this, but with decreased soda will come increased water.
- Increase effort at eating vegetarian when it is practical. (when surrounded by burgers, sometimes you just have to eat a burger.)
- Do some manner of physical activity every day, even if it is just walking to class instead of using the shuttle.
- Plan out cycling routes with good mileage.
- Suck it up and do core abdominal exercises like a big girl (I hates them).
- Do more power yoga in addition to relaxing yoga.

I don’t have any sort of comprehensive prescription for success, or an agenda-ed schedule of exercises, because I know that just won’t work for me. Yesterday we rode another ten miles on our bikes. In the next 5 days, I am going to try to get out and do a tiny bit of the aforementioned despised running.

Here goes nothing.