The New New Plan for Getting in Shape

As I think I have mentioned before, I come from a long and venerable family of over-extenders. If you ask us to "help" with the costumes for the school play, we will make custom-fitted Victorian dresses for all five of the Bennett daughters, and their mother and aunt, so that Pride and Prejudice looks really authentic. If we think, "Oh, wouldn't a puppet theater be a wonderful Christmas present! The kids would be so creative!" we spend hours online looking at plans, decide we know better than all of them, and then spend more hours with plywood, jigsaws, staple guns, and festive fabric to make something big enough for several children to walk into. If you ask us to bring treats for the Fall Festival party at school, we will make three dozen cookies in the shape of maple leaves and hand paint them with multi-colored icing to make them look like they are in the middle of turning. (Actually, that last one never happened, but it would have if only one of us had been asked to bring Fall Festival treats.)

So, it's probably no surprise that when I decided a month ago that I needed to get into shape, to kick my boring exercise routine up a notch, I didn't make myself a modest (read: reasonable) goal of getting to the gym at least four days a week instead of the three I was averaging.

Oh, no.

Instead, I decided I was going to train for a triathlon. Obviously.

Having said that our family doens't do anything by halves, however, I'm about to make a liar out of myself. I'm really training for a half-triathlon. It has all three sports, but they aren't those crazy long distances of something like an Ironman. I haven't figured out yet which one I want to do this summer, but it will be sometime between May and August, and it will probably be a "sprint" length one, which means either a 1/4 mile or 1/2 mile swim, 11-12 miles of biking, and a 3.1 mile run. The "Olympic" length is twice that, with a mile swim, 25 mile bike, and 6.2 mile run. I am pretty sure that I could work myself up to the distances of the Olympic length triathlon over the course of the winter in each individual sport, but putting them together at that distance? Even this decendent from a long-line of Insane Takers-On of Too Much knows that is lunacy for me in the next six months.

Here's the thing, though. I downloaded a training plan (and then, of course, promptly modified it because of course, like the plans for building a puppet theater, I am sure I have a better idea). And I stuck to the plan well for two weeks. I gave myself a break in the sense that I counted four hours of heavy digging in the flower beds as a day of weight lifting one week, and three hours of raking and bagging leaves as cross-training another day. But in general, I started out really well. And then this past week? I have not been to the gym once. To be fair, I have been a little under the weather. But honestly, that's more an excuse than otherwise. I COULD have gone but lazed out.

I tried signing on to Mrs G's 5K plan, but if I don't have a set-in-stone deadline to meet, I'm not much good. So here's my proposal: I'm going to start a Triathlon Tracker in my sidebar, and every night, I'm going to update to say what I did that day. Mondays and Wednesdays are my days off (those are my long teaching days). The goal is to be at the gym a minimum of four days a week, with an ideal of five days. Anyone who wants to join me with a fitness goal for the next 10 weeks, leave me a comment telling me what you want to accomplish, and including a link to your blog. I'll make a list in the sidebar of everyone who's participating. Whenever you want me to update your entry in the list -- say, you reach a milestone, or you want to hold yourself accountable for sticking to a plan for a whole week, or whatever -- come back and leave me a new comment on the most recent post, or send me an email. I'll update your entries as often as you want me to. That will help keep me accountable for updating mine.

Periodically, I might even get crazy and host a little Mr. Linky so we can all pull together our posts and keep each other accountable. But I can't bite off too much at once, so that will be a "sometime in the future" (maybe every three or four weeks?) thing. We'll do this for ten weeks, then take stock and see if we all want to continue.

What do you think? Anyone want to do a triathlon in the summer? Or reach some other goal? Who's on board?