Starting at Ground Zero to Make Your Goal

A common thing that people do this time of year is make New Year’s resolutions. For a long time, I was never a huge proponent of doing this, but my current roommate got me onto the idea. It is common for me though not to start them right on January 1 but either before or after the first of the year because I wanted to rebel a bit. This helped in me wanting to start this journey of going from being a couch potato to running a 5k. Now I am not a runner, I have always had a hard time running even when I was a kid so ground zero starting this sounds about like the right place to start for me.

What does it take to run a 5k? Well, it takes a lot of work for starters ugh I am half turned off the idea already. For someone who has never run a race let alone run for any amount of distance in a long time what does that mean? It means I am questioning life choices now; it means I must learn how to get endurance for starters and then how to increase it. It will also mean not letting every little ache and pain turn me off of this idea. Last year I had a New Year’s goal of being able to run 5k, this did not happen for a plethora of reasons one of those being I do not work out. You can not run without putting in the work to be able to do it unfortunately. Which led me to understand another issue that I have of just having the habit of working out. We will get more into that later though.

I do not know if this could be considered a New Year’s resolution, rather it is me bringing you along on a real-world journey for someone who is not a runner to try to chase this sensation known as a runners high. There are times that I think I have felt this sensation called a runner’s high once a long time ago, but I question it a lot because I have never felt it since. What I do remember though is a confidence that I would love to feel again and more often. So how do I get there? How do I find this elusive thing again? Simple a lot of hard work which in turn means UGH!

Why am I starting from ground zero when I do know a thing or two? Simple I am not a gym rat, and I am not a runner as I have said. I am a plus size person who has not worked out consistently in a long time. It is not a bad thing to start from ground zero and to be honest more people need to start these things at this level then do. But this is about my choices, such choices that lead me to start this adventure a couple of days after Christmas in the slush. Not snow but slush which led to very wet feet for a 20-minute walk. I walked for 10 minutes then turned around and came back. Thankfully the temperatures were not terrible otherwise it would have been even more miserable, and I do not know if I still would have continued with the walk then.

Walking is just one of the things that I am doing this month to reach my goal. As I stated I am starting from ground zero, now that means I must build in the habit of exercising. So that is what I am currently working on. Is it easy nope, more often I am going through my morning before I go to work feeling that I do not have time which is not true. So, I am starting with smaller things, walking, working on making it through a complete yoga video, and 3 laps up and down the stairs in my house. They are intentionally small because right now the very thought of spending more time on them is freaking me out. I know that I can but I have to work up to it, moving to a 30 minute walk for example.

A pitfall for me when making fitness habits is trying to do to much to quickly. Which can feel like a good thing but, can be a bad thing as well. A bad thing because as I have mentioned fitness has never been my strong suit. But a good thing for feeling like progress has been made in getting further along. Right now I did really well this last week with doing sets of stairs. The thing I wanted to improve on but did not want to push because I felt that would discourage me was walking outside. That is a goal for this coming week as I that will keep reaffirming the habit and make me feel like I am making progress. Who know I may get to a time where I do both walks and sets of stairs in the same day.

I do acknowledge that there was a time where I has good habits and I was working out at least 30 minutes a day at a gym for a few years. That is not where I am now though, and that is not just due to Covid. Being in a worse place as well as a different place in this situation should be expected and is okay. I am older than I was then, and my body is also different not just weight wise. But I am starting, no idea where this journey of “Couch to 5k” is going to take me but well I have to say it is going to be interesting.

So one thing I am not tackling yet is food, now the reason for this is because right now is I am habit building.  You should build good food habits yes; I know this and will get to that but doing to many changes to quickly will for me cause failure. So, I am taking it a little change at a time to create lasting habits and be successful at them. I do not have a terrible diet, but there is definitely room for improvement. I am also not actively trying to lose weight while doing this. Weight loss may come because of it, and to be honest I hope it does. But I am not going into this with an attitude of “oh I am going to lose so much weight”. No, I am going into this with the attitude of seeing a finish line knowing I ran the whole thing.

I am intending to have options for workouts as I go through this for many reasons. One of the first and probably biggest reasons is to minimize time excuses.  Second is to keep some varity in this in the early stages to keep in interesting while I am getting the habit of working out daily in place. I am sure I have more but those were the two that were on the top of my head. In addition to stairs the actual workout that I wanted to start with was Yoga. The stretching movement and core building that your have to do to hold the poses seemed like a great area for starting. I wanted to supplement walking with it. To be honest that has not gone according to plan and has been altered many times.

Going through the first full week of the year included the weekend. I was worried I would make excuses and fall off and not continue this journey as it has happened before. Good news while life happened over the weekend which prevented me from working out Monday, I was able to start right back up again with stairs. I even did an extra flight of stairs. Yoga I am finding harder than expected as I am not making it through a whole video very often. I may have hit a point where I need to push my self a little harder to get through it. I am still enjoying it but on average I make it about 11 to 12 minutes. I have not put much thought into the why though.

Welcome to this crazy journey that I decided to start on. I have figured I am encouraging all of you to embrace and go after what you want with your confidence. Time to put the money where the mouth is. While it is definitely not hat I expected it to be at this point I know I am just starting and I really want to know what this elusive runner high feels like. I hear about it and thin I may have felt it once in my life. I ant to know if I am right about that, and if I am wrong how much better is it than what I am thinking. So come along subscribe if you want to see the ups and many downs that are sure to come from this and the unexpected changes that will come that I have not even thought of yet. This will be the best and hardest decision I have made yet.