Monday, December 01, 2008

Whale push ups



The trouble with ending the 30-day constant exercise challenge is... what now?

Once upon a time, I trained for months to ride a metric century, 60ish miles on a bicycle. Because I'd trained so carefully, the actual 60 mile ride was a blast. I had a great time, felt good.

Bursting with good health, I suggested to my training partner that we set another goal. "Okay," she said. "What?" I couldn't think of a good idea, neither could she, and inevitably we got distracted by Life in all its demanding trivialities and never went back to riding.

I'm afraid if I stop exercising daily, I'll lose whatever I've gained this month. So I'm setting myself a new challenge as of today. 100 Pushups is a site designed to get a human doing 100 consecutive push ups in 100 days.

I do love optimists who think this body can do something like that. When I tried the initial test, I could do 5 modified push ups with some effort. Tried doing a real full-body push up... no. Not happening. Ever seen a whale doing a push up? That's how it felt. I'm going to try the challenge using the modified form.

Today:
Set 1: 2
Set 2: 3
Set 3: 2
Set 4: 2
Set 5: 3
Ah, the insanely smug feeling you get by doing your scheduled exercise before the sun comes up.
Plus, walked 2-1/2 miles.

Photo of the whale trying to do a push up courtesy of Flickr.

3 comments:

C said...

Good on you. I find I need a schedule to keep me on track too.

Having said that, I've fallen off the wagon three times now with the push-ups challenge. Fourth time's the charm, right? ;)

Jenn said...

Setting goals is so great for staying focused and on track. And one of these days I'll try the push-up challenge. I mean, really, when you can do 100 push-ups, you feel like a bad mother you-know-whater!

Crabby McSlacker said...

That's so cool that you're taking on another challenge!

My goal is not to do 100 consecutive push ups, but to keep up the ability to do 30 consecutive push ups until I'm 100. (Fat chance, but at least it's a goal!)