The Bike Challenge

This week's post is going to take a bit of a different tone. Instead of one of those boring "update" threads, it's time to talk about motivation.

About a month ago, I briefly mentioned the "Challenge" my internship was doing with exercising. As a way to motivate employees to get healthy, an awards program was sent out so employees could earn a gold, silver, or bronze medal (in addition to other prizes) for going so many miles. The idea was apparently to mimic the Olympic type of spirit when it came to the challenge so more people would be interested.

If you know me, you know that I'm really competitive, so getting the e-mail with what had to be done to get the top medal immediately motivated me. Thankfully, one of the activities was riding a bike, which could also be an exercise bike, so I jumped right in (I swim like a rock and walking long distances just doesn't work for me). 

Somewhere along the way, my brain confused the mileage and I was convinced I had to go 250 miles so I put in a lot more miles in a short amount of time than I probably should have when getting into shape, oh well. The actual mileage was 150 for the gold medal and I was somewhere around the 190 mark at the end of the challenge so I definitely hit the gold standard.

Now that the challenge is over, I've created the "three week habit" of going to the gym nearly every day. Thankfully, I can also have a bit more freedom of what sort of exercises I do every day since I'm not stuck on getting so many miles in a day for the challenge

Doing the same pattern on the bike for 5 weeks (two before Young Riders and the last three weeks) wore me down since I wanted to get 10 miles every day instead of changing up my exercise plan. My big thing now is to mix it up every day to make it more fun again.

My big fear for the end of the challenge was that I wouldn't have any motivation towards continuing on once it was over. I've never been one to really sit down and accomplish goals when it comes to the gym so I had to find another way other than just losing x amount of pounds or really any "normal" goals.

The good thing about this summer is that I have a friend that is returning to the soccer field after a devastating injury last season. While watching her go through the rehabilitation process after the injury (something that I actually witnessed), I knew how much it would mean for her to get back onto the field. Therefore, her blog the other day inspired me to keep working out, especially since I still have the ankle injury from hell causing problems.

Another inspiration came from an Olympic Athlete that I actually know through mutual friends and my cousin since she graduated three years ahead of me in school. I've followed Kara's career pretty closely since she started throwing javelin in college because she was the "A" standard that a lot of us tried to live up to in athletics (or maybe just me, who knows). 

She hurt her knee at Trials this summer when she was qualifying for the Olympics but soldiered on and made it to London. It wasn't until after her qualifying throw at London (due to the injury, she didn't get past the first round), that she admitted she had torn her ACL. After finding that out, I was in awe of her strength to not just make it to the Olympics with this injury, but also to put in a pretty good throw. 

She was already motivating to me, especially after learning about the injury, but after reading her blog, I felt stupid for even having a thought of no motivation at the gym.

My pretend goal for the gym (just because it makes me feel better to have something to look towards that is workout related) is to get into at least half the shape I was in back when I was active in sports. 

My real goal is to strengthen my ankle so it stops whining and my back so I can avoid the pain that comes with my unfused vertebra moving around when I'm misusing my body. After tweaking my back at Young Riders and getting a small taste of that pain (something that I know too well from two bad episodes, one that ruined my barrel season a few years ago), I'm eager to avoid it.

Due to the fact that this blog wouldn't be complete without a horse mention, my not-so-secret "secret" goal is to get in good enough shape that when I seriously start riding again, I can be back at the "high school level" that I was at six years ago. I have some plans on changing disciplines in the near future so being in shape will definitely help with that.

Who knew my competitive nature and a bike challenge would push me in a way that I haven't been able to push myself in a long time? Definitely not me. Hopefully it's something that I can keep rolling as we enter Fall and the Holiday season.