goals...

I have plenty of goals every year, most involve personal improvement... but I don't really make "New Year Resolutions", because it seems too arbitrary to start everything on Jan 1st, just to generally fail. I start and review my goals all year long, and that works for me.

One thing I do find, that often helps me to keep a goal, is that when I share it, I become more invested. So, one goal I would like to share is to train for the equivalent walking of a 10K, on my elliptical. That may not sound like much to some people, but for someone with limited mobility, it's a huge goal.

My max ever (walking on my elliptical unit) is 10100 steps. That is just over 5 miles. (According to my reading the average person my height steps about 2000 times during one mile.) And, a 10K is 6.2 miles.

During 2009 I had a goal to use my elliptical to get to 10000 steps per day. It's so easy to track, but because of my limitations that means more than 2 hours of walking every day, on average. (Even on the elliptical I walk pretty slow...) So my true target number of steps has ended up being about 4500-5000 a day (somewhere between 2-2.5 miles). That's about an hour on the elliptical (but a lot of days I can only manage about 45 minutes, which ends up being just under 4000 steps/2 miles). Added to my other steps, that's not too bad, for me. The main benefit in walking every day is to keep me mobile, to feel better, to lose weight, and to release toxins... did I mention to stay MOBILE...?

Since my hyste last February I have slowly built my way back up to where I was before becoming extremely anemic, hubby's accident and then my surgery. During this coming year, I feel like I want a different goal, something to keep working for. Something besides just walking every day... I am doing pretty good with that, and I am not sure I will ever be able to walk fast enough to manage 10K steps a day... So I thought, "what about an actual 10 kilometer in non-impact steps...?"

Ok, so there is it... by March first I want to have walked an approx 10K... In order to make it easy for me to track, I am going to use the target of 12500 steps... just to be sure I don't short the 10K goal.

Here's hopin' I make it.! If I do... maybe I will try doing it once a month for the rest of the year.? Who knows? I do know it's good to have goals. Now I better get walking for today...