In December of 2021, I started thinking about New Year’s resolutions. I was thinking of setting a fitness goal. I don’t personally connect with the idea of losing weight as the goal. I am more inspired to keep going if my goal to accomplish is something tangible beyond stepping on a scale.
Seth, and I were already walking daily, so I wanted to build on that. I settled on training towards a personal half triathlon. Using (not so perfect) math, I guesstimated needing an hour walking, an hour biking, and an hour swimming to accomplish this.
Pictured above is my bike set up. I asked for the stand for Christmas. My first time on the bike, was pretty humiliating. I had planned to ride it for 20 or so minutes. At minute 11, I practically fell off of it. I didn’t allow that to stop me from trying again. My new short term goal was to make it to 20 minutes period. I started using 5 minute increments.
I would bike for 5 minutes, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for a couple of weeks. The third week, I stepped it up to 10 minutes each time. From there, I varied it. I might do 10 minutes on Monday, and 15 minutes on Wednesday. On Friday, I would go back down to 10, or if I was feeling more energetic, do 15.
During this time, Seth and I were still walking daily. We would walk 1 mile in the morning before work, and another after. There were a couple of times during late winter to early spring, where we’d walk 3 miles in one day.
By spring, I could easily bike for 45 minutes straight multiple days a week, and was still walking 2 miles a day. The only thing I was missing, was a pool.
This summer, my family rented a house in the Outer Banks for a week. My entire side of the family was there, plus some extra family from Seth’s side, and my sister’s. There were almost 20 of us in this house. It was chaotic and awesome at the same time. I knew there was a pool, and was lucky to discover there were bikes as well.
Before this trip, I had walked and biked on the same day, but never incorporated swimming. Since I had no idea how much the swimming element would impact me, I decided to try for a quarter triathlon to start. I walked for 30 minutes, biked for 30 minutes, and swam for 30 minutes.
Seth brought his electric skateboard to the beach, so he kept me company and encouraged me on my bike ride. When I finished all three, I was exhilarated, and decided to try for the hour of each, before the week was over. Using my Fitbit, I walked my 3 miles in a hour, and then I biked for an hour. Now, at home, in my garage with a fan blowing on me, 12 miles in one hour on the bike is doable. At the beach? With the hills and the heat, I ended up finishing just over 9 miles in the hour. Then I swam for my hour, but your guess is as good as mine with how many meters I managed either time in the odd shaped pool. Either way, I am proud of myself for setting a goal and for the most part, reaching it.
Another fitness/wellbeing thing I’ve been doing is something called the 5 Tibetan Rites. I’m up to doing each movement 9 times. The goal is to eventually hit 21 times. When I started, I rushed and got up to 17 times, but I was dying and hated it. Now, I’m slowly working my way up to the 21. I plan to continue this, but I’m not sure if I want to also keep trying for more triathlon type goals. I still walk daily, and could bike if I wanted to, but I have no desire to join a gym for access to a pool. One thing I know about myself, is I won’t go. So, what should I do next?