Do Life Challenge

As you may know, recently I discovered Ben Does Life, a blog which I fell in love with. In a wonderful sense of timing, he and the Do Life team have set a Do Life Challenge which started today.

For week 1, the first part of the challenge was to write down five quantifiable goals that can realistically be achieved by February 1st. They need to be quantifiable though, which was a bit of a challenge. Although I should be in bed, I'm excited and am trying to stay accountable and finish something through to the end. So here are my five quantifiable goals, and current assessment of where I am right now:

1. Run 5kms in 25 minutes (or a 5:00km pace for 5 kms). As noted earlier today, I may have done that this morning (woot!). Although my cardiotrainer also said that I ran 2kms around 3:50, so I'm not sure if this is 100% accurate (would be nice though!). My previous best was 5:02 spread over 7-8kms.  Need to start off faster.

2. No alcohol on school nights. Currently I'm drinking a glass of wine or cider most nights. This has to stop. 'School nights' means that I can have a drink on a Friday night and Saturday night, which I think is doable.

3. Do weights at least once a week. Now that my parents got me weights for Christmas (thanks guys!), I can do weights at least once a week. I've used them once since Christmas.

4. Drink 3 600ml bottles of water per day. Definitely one of the challenges that I had to quantify. I can drink about 2 a day at work, but this fails on the weekend (as shown by New Years). Keep a bottle of water in my bag (or in a smaller bottle) should help with this.

5. Stretch for 2 minutes plus after running. Currently very sporadic - didn't stretch after the run this morning. Gotta just do it!

Ben then asked us to think about the biggest excuse and how it can be eliminated. I identified mine as emotional eating/drinking. If I've had a bad day, depending on the time of day I'll generally end up going "Bugger it, I'm gonna have a coffee/cider/wine/cheesy delight". So my way of eliminating this excuse is to replace  If I'm angry, do some push-ups. Go for a run (one of my faves anyway). Eat some luscious summer fruit. Green tea. Yoga. Weights. Read a book! Heaps of options.

The challenge also asked us to do as many push-ups as we can, and this will be tested each week. I did 24 regular push-ups.

Finally, we were told to increase the amount of exercise that we do each week by 30 mins, and make it intense. I reckon I can do the weights session (or even two!) pretty intensely. I'll have to, for the Tough Bloke Challenge!

I think these are all doable. 2012, I think we're going to be good friends :)