And on the eleventh day, she kept going! Man, the 5k challenge started strong. Mostly because the weather was so nice and it was refreshing to be outdoors. Then, winter decided it wanted to revisit and my trusty treadmill had the joy of keeping me accountable. This...was not so refreshing.

Fortunately, I have been blessed to be on vacation the past several days getting my mileage in, both running and walking, and even skiing one day. Again, I feel refreshed by the outdoors!

I am MOST REFRESHED by the gals also taking on the challenge. Daily, I see a post, or receive a text, letting me know their 5k is done for the day. How awesome is that?! I love knowing I'm not a lone. I love when women support one another. This motivates me and encourages me to keep going.

So with close to 56 miles under my belt, between the 5ks and just every day walking, I'm ready to go into the next leg of the journey fired up. Ready for another week of 5ks to account for my FitBit activities.

Those of you killing it every day, keep it up. I'm proud of you! We're going to FINISH THIS TOGETHER!

I have really been LAZY when it comes to my work outs. By that, I mean I haven’t been. I was experiencing a lot of pain in my left hip for quite some time, and I just felt like babying it. That somehow rolled into doing nothing at all, with the exception of my run last Monday. I’m not sure if it is the 55 degree weather we have in our forecast for today or what, but I am in the mood to run! I have 50 days until my first 5k of the season, and I have this crazy idea to do 50 5k’s in 50 days. That is 3.1 miles every day, leading up to the first 5k my hubby and girlfriends, and hopefully a large part of our community, will participate (note I did not say run ;) ) in on April 9th.

No, I do not plan on RUNNING every day. I am going to mix it up on a day to day basis. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I will complete with a steady state run. Tuesday and Thursday, I will HIIT it with a run walk, run walk cadence. Saturday and Sunday I will walk at a nice fat burning pace (for me, about 4.4 mph with a 3% incline on the treadmill). I’m pretty sure I’ve shared this before, but cardio is a stress reducer for me. I enjoy it. It helps my oxygen circulate. It helps with the fluff I feel when I’m not working out. It just feels good to me. It is restorative.

Am I trading in cardio for weights? Nope. I plan on weight training Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday – mainly to preserve my muscle. It seems like stressors would like to crouch in on every side, right about now. So I am going to be proactive and do what I know to do to keep being overwhelmed at bay. This is just ONE of my tactics, one I learned the hard way.