the Weekend

I had a good weekend, exercise wise. I rode the bike 3 times. Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I put up 7.5 miles on Friday, 10 miles on Saturday and then on Sunday I was wore out and was only going to do a couple of miles but I got on and started to think about work and got annoyed and ended up cranking out 6 miles in 25 minutes which is definitely faster than usual. 

I've gone almost 24 miles across Chicago which is barely 1% of the journey. Yikes!

I'm loving the maps on these real locations. It gets the map nerd in me excited.

At the end of the weekend, I have exercised either walking or biking for 8 straight days and I plan on walking all week. Even though it's supposed to be in the 90's

2 Challenges

 If you've been following, you know I've been doing the Conqueror's Challenge. Well, I went ahead and joined a 2nd one. I'm still continuing to do the Star Wars one but now I just add my walking to it and the new one I'm doing the biking. I did all 4 days of hiking this week. 1 day I did a lap (1.5 miles), 2 days I did 2 miles and yesterday, I knocked about 2 laps (3 miles) so I'm definitely making progress. I unlocked a few things earlier in the week.

I unlocked the next card as well as this description card.

I like cards better because this stuff I know from the films but I do still get excited when I unlock things.

Here's how I'm doing at the end of this week.

You can ignore the time goal, I wasn't really sure what to put when I signed up. I am 39% complete though so I'm slowly getting there. Now that I'm taking the biking out of it (from here on out) it'll go even slower.

I mentioned I joined a new one for my biking. Here it is.

Yep, that's right. Route 66. It's 2279.31 miles. This will take me a long time to complete but I'm going to enjoy the postcards. Like the one I received today after putting 7.5 miles in on the bike.

I kind of already know Chicago a little bit considering I live less than a couple of hours from here. I've been up the Sears Tower a bunch when I was a kid, but it's been a really long time.

I'm looking forward to this one but it might take a long time.

8 days in

 It's been 5 days since I posted, don't worry, I haven't stopped. I went and walked on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. I was having issues with my SI Joint on Tuesday. About half way through the day it started hurting. I took some Ibuprofen which usually makes it go away but it didn't even make it better so I took the day off. It was still hurting on Wednesday but not nearly as bad so I still made the walk. Just a little slower. I also unlocked this from the challenge.

I like these virtual cards. I'm crossing my fingers that I actually get the cards when I finish the challenge but I'm pretty sure I don't. I also unlocked this today.

This is the 2nd postcard that I've received. They are alright but nothing special. Just a glimpse into the story basically. I also unlocked this today, not even sure what they are. Kind of a glossary to the rebellion.

It comes with 4 pics attached.

So, as you can tell by what I said above, I did climb on the bike again this morning. I did another 6 miles. Tomorrow is a show day so I probably won't do anything. We'll see if I do the bike again on Sunday.

I weight myself this morning as well, 294.6.

6 of 7

I took off yesterday from exercising, as I said I was going to. I got up this morning and figured I'd get on the bike. I wasn't really feeling it so I only went 3 miles. I did go faster than I did on Friday. The reason I went 3 miles was that I needed 2.8 miles for my 1st postcard on the Conquerers challenge that I mentioned in my last post.

Pretty cool, kind of a storyline postcard. I wasn't sure what to expect since this isn't an actual place. This also popped up saying I unlocked it as well.

For informational purposes apparently.

I'm enjoying it, and hey, it motivated me to do something today. So there's that. 

I go back to work tomorrow so the plan is to walk at the pond for the next 4 days.

6 out of 7 days last week I exercised. I credit that to the fact that I'm not overdoing it and only doing a few miles at a time. Usually I get all gung ho and do too much and burn out quickly. 

So far so good.

5 Straight Days

For those that don't know, I work 4 10 hour days so I work Monday thru Thursday. I said in my last post that I walk close to work because I get really lazy after a 40 minute drive home. Well, I did great this week at walking. Had a couple of days where I really didn't want to and ran through excuse after excuse in my head not too, but ended up going anyways. I walked all 4 days which is a great start, especially for me.

The trick was, motivating myself to walk on the weekends. I got up this morning and it dawned on me, why do I need to walk. I have an elliptical bike in the basement. So I hopped on it and rode a little over 6 miles. I had to push myself, I've been having some back pain since yesterdays walk so I didn't push myself real hard. I just kept a slow and steady pace and rode for half an hour, which is what I usually walk.

I also found a site that is really cool, if you can afford it that is. They have all these challenges. You pick a challenge and then can track where you are in the challenge. They have a ton of cities that they actually place you on a street map. You can unlock postcards of points of interests when you pass places. 

They also do fictional places so I chose a Star Wars themed one. (Race bib pictured above). They have 6. With my 6 miles today and a couple of walks in the last couple of days. I unlocked this stuff.

The first is a virtual card, which if you know me, I love cards. I just wish it was a real one. The second is part of the story of the challenge I'm on. The challenge that I'm on is 87 miles and once I've completed it, they send you an actual medal with the challenge design on it.

I do plan on taking tomorrow off from exercising. We are setting up at a card show, which I do most weekends these days so I figured that will be my 1 day off a week.

So far so good.

Here we go again

I started working out again, I know, you've heard it all before. I've started blogging multiple times because I started working out so like I said, we've all heard it before.

The issue I've always had is I get off work at 4. It takes anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour to get home. Which means I'm sitting down all the time so by the time I get home, I don't want to exercise. There's a county park just down the road from work that has a path around a lake (pond) but getting off at 4, I was afraid I'd walk and then by the time I get home, shower and eat that it would take up my whole evening.

I googled the pond and the path around it and it's only a mile and a half so I decided to try it out last week. Just do 1 quick lap and be on my way so I didn't feel like I was getting home so late. It's only a mile and a half but I figured it was better than nothing.

So on Monday last week, I hit it on my way home and it was kind of nice. I do the lap in just under 30 minutes and get on the road to get home so it's definitely doable. I was going to do it Tuesday but I ended up not leaving work until almost 5:30 then the same on Wednesday but I did hit it on Thursday. The weekend I planned on going out in the morning around the neighborhood but I never did. This is where I usually sluff off and just stop going but after work yesterday, I walked it again and then today happened. 

I wasn't feeling it at work today, my legs were tired and I was already pretty hot and sweaty just didn't want to go but I made myself. That was already not my norm. On the way, it looked like it was going to rain so again, I was thinking maybe I shouldn't go, but I did it anyways. Yeah me!

So that's 4 times in 2 weeks. and 2 days in a row this week. We'll see if the trend continues.