Note: My Start Walking posts can easily be found by clicking on the label Start Walking 2008.
I dunnit. As of last night — with, as my grand finalé, a half-marathon row (actually three meters more than that 21,097 meters that make up a half-marathon) — I came to a total step equivalent of 1,710,673, thereby completing my virtual ascent & descent of Mt. Everest.
I’m knackered.
But also just a teensy bit proud of myself. Back in May, as a result of going on the protein-sparing modified fast (PSMF), I slowed down quite a bit as I became acclimated to a very low-carb diet — a style of diet that doesn’t support high intensity exercise. Then I went on a 12-day vacation to Seattle & Eugene, which for various reasons didn’t accommodate itself to a lot of exercise. (Sitting in a plane, train, car, or visiting relatives… etc.). Then, when I returned to Anchorage, I was pretty slow to get myself up & going again. When I finally updated my steps, on June 17, whoa — I found I’d fallen way behind. There’s my little competitive urges coming to the fore: why, I was nearly 233,000 steps behind my coworker Amy! So I started catching up. Since June 18, just three weeks ago, I’ve clocked in over 700,000 steps. (Or their equivalent.) (Don’t worry: I increased my calorie/carb intake too.)
And I’m glad to say Amy finished too, coming third in under the wire for UAA (eighth overall), with me dashing in just after her.
What next? Well, Start Walking 2008 still has 84 days to go, through September 30. So I’ll keep on walking (& rowing, dancing, lifting weights). But not quite at the pace I’ve been keeping the past three weeks (over 50,000 steps/day three of the past four days alone!). I need some recovery. And because fat loss & health are still top priorities for me, I’m ratcheting back to the PSMF-level eating as of today (low calorie, low carb).
I’ll also be populating this blog with more posts, including some written post-date, to kinda fill in the gaps since my last posts in May (based on stuff I’ve written in discussion lists, etc.). That’s probably more for my own sense of chronology than anything, since I don’t know if anyone even reads this blog, really, besides me. I haven’t been writing blogs mainly for two reasons: (1) I’ve been exercising so much I haven’t had a lot of time or energy to spare for the blog; & (2) I’ve been so busy shoveling new info into myself, in a process a teacher I had used to call “front-end loading,” about diet/nutrition, but writing about it in an intelligent way takes a more organized process, again requireing more time/energy than I’ve had to spare. So I figure that postdated posts will fill in gaps with things I’ve actually already written on the fly in discussion groups, & hopefully with new posts I can begin to integrate the info I’ve been learning, which has changed my thinking a lot about the stuff this blog is intended to be about.
I’ll also be cheering other Start Walking participants on. You can do it!
Meanwhile, congratulations to Amy! And congratulations to me!
Related posts:
I’m reading this blog!