exercise_every_day

Hi

Glad I found this community. This year I've been trying to walk a total of a thousand miles over the year for charity. I've been mostly doing organized walks for safety reasons, and I struggle to keep up with groups of experienced walkers, especially up hills. Apart from getting out of breath I seem to have trouble with energy levels. More than just keeping up, I'd like to try to include some more serious hill climbing in my walks. In addition to that, I just want to work on my general fitness and strength for health and happiness reasons.

I need to hit a target of twenty miles each week for the charity thing, so I walk to and from work every day (just over a mile each way) and do one or two longer walks of up to ten miles each week.

I'm also doing a little circuit of strength-building exercises for upper and lower body of about half an hour, two or three times each week. I follow that with half an hour or so of Iyengar yoga. Over the last week I've also been out jogging a couple of times, alternating 30 seconds of running with 30 seconds of walking for at least 20 minutes. I'm going to try and increase the running part and think about increasing the time. I have trouble motivating myself to run because there aren't many nice safe places for that near me, but I haven't had the improvement in fitness I'd hoped for without it and it may be a necessary evil. I also swim for an hour once each week.

Every year I get to winter, those short, dark, cold days, I'm busy at work, and all my intentions to exercise regularly fall through. So every year I lose all the fitness I've worked for and end up having to start again. I've been reading through posts here and getting some good ideas for things I can try this year, and hopefully if I check in regularly that'll motivate me.

So, yeah. Hi everyone.

EG