Since I got done with my Air Force training last summer I must admit that I have been pretty lazy. With work, school, church and finding time for family I just didn't eke out the time that I needed to in order to keep up with my physical conditioning. I finally realized something in December about the way I set goals for myself. In the past I have tended to set goals such as "Do 100 pushups and 100 situps everyday" or "Read 5 chapters in the Bible everyday." The problem with these type of goals is that when I miss one or two days I say "What's the point? I can't do it" and I give up the whole enterprise. So I decided to set my goals a little differently this time. Instead of setting a daily number for my fitness goals I decided to set a larger goal to shoot for. I set an average number of pushups and situps that I want to do for the month of January and figured out what the total number for the whole month would be. That way if I miss a day or two I can make it up by doing extra on other days and still reach my goal. For subsequent months I will add to the average number per day. Setting my goals this way I came up with a total number that I want to do for the entire year (38,420). Actually I set an ultimate goal of 40,000. I know that sounds like alot, but when you break it down over a year's time it's only about 110 per day.
I've also set a goal for the total number of miles of cardio exercise I want to do for the year. I didn't want to limit this to running alone in order to plug in some variety. I'll keep track of running, biking, elliptical, etc. My goal for the year is 1500 miles. I might have to adjust that goal some as I go along, but we'll see how things progress.
Ultimately of course, it's not about the numbers. The numbers are just a way to keep me focused. The real goal is to make physical fitness a lifestyle and not a means to pass my annual Physical Fitness Assessment for the Air Force.
In order to keep track of my progress (and just because I wanted to try out the Wordpress blogging tool) I started a new blog. I'm also using this blog to keep track of money that I find laying around. I started doing this on paper sometime last year after finding several blogs in which people were doing so. I haven't really been trying to find money the way some of the other folks do, but so far I've found a total of $59.82. Not great, but not too shabby either. I might find other things to track on there also. You never know. As the tag line on the blog says it is going to be "A place to track random things that no one else cares about."
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