Monday Update

Am going to try to do a regular Monday Update - kinda keep myself on track, review successes and challenges from the last week, and look forward to the week ahead. Hopefully will be able to keep my eye on the prize, so to speak, rather than get mired in the little things that can get in the way of progress.

Training:

I had planned to walk on Thursday night, Saturday morning and Sunday morning. But you know, things happen. Thursday night turned out to be a no-walk evening. For one, I have this thing about walking in the dark. I think my neighborhood is actually very safe, so I'm not sure what the problem is. But by the time I got home from work and dinner and had a moment to walk, it was dark. And I didn't budge. For another thing, I had been getting up really early all week long and working really long days. And I was tired. And the couch was really comfy by about 8:00 Thursday night. Hmm. This is not forward progress. :-(

But on the bright side, I did drag my sorry self out of bed bright and early again on Friday morning. Instead of going in to work early like the days before, and instead of sleeping in to catch up on missed sleep, I went for a morning walk. So, yay me. :-)

Saturday I had a gorgeous morning and a wonderful new walk which I posted about here. Loved it! I was all motivated and stuff. It was great. Then I spend all day and night on Saturday at a singing engagement. I got home around 1:00am on Saturday night. The plan was to repeat that walk on Sunday. But then Sunday came, and the walk didn't happen. I did get up early-ish at 8:30am - which after the day I'd had before, I thought was pretty darned impressive for this non morning person. But instead of walking, I helped my husband spread 10 cubic yards of mulch around the yard before heading off to a singing engagement for the rest of the day. So, while I didn't walk at all, I did get some over-all exercise in that I am choosing to count as cross-training. After all, I'm sore today, so I must've been getting some training in somewhere along the way, right?

Lessons learned:

• don't plan for a walk on a night when I have to work early the next day
• don't plan for a walk on a morning when there's a huge pile of mulch in the driveway
• wait a minute - just get over it and get up a little bit earlier and make it happen!

I guess my point is that I'm still not quite able to fit this thing into the daily routine. But that's why I started before the official training program. This way I will have at least a small chance of knowing how to balance it all.

Goals for this week:

• Tuesday - one hour, 3 miles
• Thursday - one hour, 3 miles
• Saturday morning - one hour, 3 miles
• Sunday morning - one hour, 3 miles

Fundraising

I haven't really gotten into the fundraising thing yet as of last night, but I did add Google AdSense to my blog. Maybe that will help in some (very) small way?

Update: Actually, after only two days, the Google AdSense has already earned $22 for the cause. Wow! I had no idea! Thanks everyone for clicking!

Goals for this week:

I will be sending out targeted solicitation emails to my family, work, and community friends. I'm avoiding the HCMC crowd so far, so as to avoid saturating them with too many requests from the same small group of people. Are there any experienced walkers out there who have thoughts on how to manage the fact that your team mates are soliciting from the same group of people as you? However, of course, for all those barbershoppers out there, I'd be very happy to accept donations from you if you want to contribute! :-)

There you have it. Let's see how this week goes!