Walk It Off
With the holidays here, I am finding myself getting hopelessly behind on my challenges! I suppose it's just one of those life things I'll have to get over--I'm sure there will be more and more distractions and interruptions when kids are in the picture anyway. But sometime a few weeks ago my weekly challenge was to add more walking to my daily routine and I've really made headway with that goal.
I live a 15-20 minute walk from my academic building which I go to approximately 2 days a week, but I normally get dropped off by my husband to save time. Since adding this challenge to my routine, I have been able to walk to school at least once a week and sometime even more than once (it's usually later when I leave and I take the bus home). I have noticed several time in recent months that walking any significant distance has caused me to have hip pain, but stretching my hips before I leave the house and walking for briefer periods seems to have helped. Hopefully I am also building up my muscles for future longer walks.
In addition, I've found lots of other opportunities to walk more, like walking to meetings in other buildings, shopping, walking the family dog while visiting for Thanksgiving, etc. So far I have had no trouble adding an extra 30-60 minutes of walking to my weekly routine. In the coming months, I will try to keep this up despite the increasingly wintry weather and plan to increase my walking intensity as I approach the TTC date.
Here's hoping I can keep up my motivation for this habit, because I think it's a good one. I already added a pedometer to my Christmas list to give me a little mid-winter boost in enthusiasm.
How about you? What's your favorite weight-bearing exercise to do outdoors? Is walking your thing or do you find it boring? How do you add more steps to your daily activity for good health?
For more in this countdown series, see last week's challenge about Strength Training.
I live a 15-20 minute walk from my academic building which I go to approximately 2 days a week, but I normally get dropped off by my husband to save time. Since adding this challenge to my routine, I have been able to walk to school at least once a week and sometime even more than once (it's usually later when I leave and I take the bus home). I have noticed several time in recent months that walking any significant distance has caused me to have hip pain, but stretching my hips before I leave the house and walking for briefer periods seems to have helped. Hopefully I am also building up my muscles for future longer walks.
In addition, I've found lots of other opportunities to walk more, like walking to meetings in other buildings, shopping, walking the family dog while visiting for Thanksgiving, etc. So far I have had no trouble adding an extra 30-60 minutes of walking to my weekly routine. In the coming months, I will try to keep this up despite the increasingly wintry weather and plan to increase my walking intensity as I approach the TTC date.
Here's hoping I can keep up my motivation for this habit, because I think it's a good one. I already added a pedometer to my Christmas list to give me a little mid-winter boost in enthusiasm.
How about you? What's your favorite weight-bearing exercise to do outdoors? Is walking your thing or do you find it boring? How do you add more steps to your daily activity for good health?
For more in this countdown series, see last week's challenge about Strength Training.
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