This past Saturday, I set myself the challenge of moving constantly for 15 hours.
This is a kind of a weird preparation for the triathalon I'm hoping to do in 2015. I figure it'll take me 15 hours to do the whole thing, and Saturday was the 15th of June . . . a bit of a pattern here.
I'm a bit of a long-distance admirer of people who take on extreme life style challenges for a while. The "No-Spend Month"ers beguile me; the one-year "No Impact Man" experiment warmed my heart; the "No car month" folks had me rooting for them.
The closest I think I'd gotten to a semi-extreme challenge myself, though, was the year that I vowed to respond to the question, "How are you?" without saying "I'm so busy!". It was a great experiment, all the more so because it stuck with me, just like the (almost) no-trash life stuck with this family. (Wow).
So even though I wasn't planning to exercise hard the whole time -- even though I just (? just ?) wanted to practice moving and not sitting down for a whole day, I figured I'd learn a lot by doing this. And learn a lot I did.
Like, 15 hours is a long time! I mean, I knew that, but it didn't really sink in before that it meant that if I start moving at, say, 8:30 a.m., I'd have to keep going until almost midnight. Also, as I started setting this up, I realized how hard it was for me to come up with interesting ways to keep myself moving, without totally wearing myself out. With the help of a lot of really good friends, though, I count the "Motion Day" a success; the only times I sat down were to change shoes, do very private things, or paddle a canoe.
This is a kind of a weird preparation for the triathalon I'm hoping to do in 2015. I figure it'll take me 15 hours to do the whole thing, and Saturday was the 15th of June . . . a bit of a pattern here.
I'm a bit of a long-distance admirer of people who take on extreme life style challenges for a while. The "No-Spend Month"ers beguile me; the one-year "No Impact Man" experiment warmed my heart; the "No car month" folks had me rooting for them.
The closest I think I'd gotten to a semi-extreme challenge myself, though, was the year that I vowed to respond to the question, "How are you?" without saying "I'm so busy!". It was a great experiment, all the more so because it stuck with me, just like the (almost) no-trash life stuck with this family. (Wow).
So even though I wasn't planning to exercise hard the whole time -- even though I just (? just ?) wanted to practice moving and not sitting down for a whole day, I figured I'd learn a lot by doing this. And learn a lot I did.
Like, 15 hours is a long time! I mean, I knew that, but it didn't really sink in before that it meant that if I start moving at, say, 8:30 a.m., I'd have to keep going until almost midnight. Also, as I started setting this up, I realized how hard it was for me to come up with interesting ways to keep myself moving, without totally wearing myself out. With the help of a lot of really good friends, though, I count the "Motion Day" a success; the only times I sat down were to change shoes, do very private things, or paddle a canoe.
If you're interested in peeping at what my day looked like, here it is:
5:00 -- bike 6 miles to Manheim
5:30 -- run 1 mile with my friend M,, then bike 6 miles home again
7:00 -- run 10 miles with my friend TL -- this was hard!
9:00 -- (cry, and) walk around the block eating bananas and chicken wings
several times while the boys woke up and fed themselves
10:00 -- bike 7 miles to the to the river with the boys,
11:00 -- go canoeing (2 miles, plus hauling the canoe on land to-and-from the water)
12:00 -- bike home
1:00 -- discover that my plan to swim 2.4 miles go awry when pool is *closed*. Drat.
1:20 -- walk 3 miles down to County Park Pool with K-daughter and the boys, then walk 3.5 miles home
3:30 -- pull weeds to kill time (and to kill weeds)
4:00 -- bike 18-ish miles with my friend A.
5:30 -- do a few shopping* errands on the bike, probably about 6 miles
6:30 -- work in the garden: weeding, sifting compost, and adding 3 wheelbarrows of compost the garden
8:00 -- done!
Grand total:
Running: 11 miles
Biking: 50-ish miles
Walking: 7+ miles
Swimming: Fail
Gardening and Puttering: Lots
In addition to the exercise, I got to see many sights that make me love living in a place as diverse as Lancaster:
An Amish horsedrawn buggy
The Lancaster Gay Pride Festival
Latin music festival
A caravan of Harley Davison Motorcycles (drivers waved back at my sons)
A Model T Ford
Cows grazing in the luscious farmland
People dining al fresco at city sidewalk cafes
6-year-olds dancing in the Binns Park water fountain
And, of course, my FRIENDS!
* What does Miser Mom buy when she goes shopping? a bag of popcorn kernels from the grocery store, and then a bottle of an unhealthy adult beverage from another store.
Congrats! What a great accomplishment for practice. How did you feel physically at the end? And how about the next morning? Keep up the good work.
ReplyDeleteWhen I hit mile 9 of running with my friend TL, she asked me, "what will be the biggest physical challenge during the rest of the day?" And I said, "the next mile". And it turned out, that was the truth. Running is really hard compared to everything else -- even compared to racing bikes with my buddy A. toward the end of that long day.
DeleteI was surprisingly not very tired or achy at the end. The next day we walked to and from church, did a bunch of biking, and generally led a normal day. I do wish I had had a chance to swim on Saturday, because I think that would have tired me out (in a good way). - MM