Stepping it up.

So I read an interesting article the other day in Prevention about 5 Things That Happened When I Tried to Walk 20,000 Steps a Day. It was fascinating. This is a girl that lives in New York, so she does a lot of walking to and from work anyway. In fact, hitting 10,000 steps a day wasn't much of a challenge for her; that was kind of her norm. So, she decided to step it up and go for 20,000 steps a day.

The benefits she got from it sounded fantastic. She got more done in a day, she was more optimistic, she slept well. Who doesn't want all that? So I figured I would give it a try. I mean, I can almost always hit 10,000 steps in a day, especially during the work week. I walk to work, I do a lot of walking at work, I walk my parents dog a noon. This would be challenge and I need a good challenge, right?

I started yesterday. It was actually pretty easy yesterday because I had the day off work and took an 8.8 mile walking tour in the morning. That knocked out the 20,000 steps for yesterday pretty quickly. I was sore by the end of the day, but still functioning.

Today, I walked to work, walked the dog at lunch, walked home, and made sure I was getting 250 steps in every hour during the day. Oh my goodness! Tonight, I am at 18000 steps and I am exhausted, I ache, and I am feeling a little less than optimistic. (Granted, part of that may be the election tonight.) I am guessing I will be sleeping well though.

We'll have to see how the rest of this week goes. Apparently, I am going to have to step it up still though. 20,000 is definitely a challenge!

Today's Motivation:

As tired as I feel tonight, I feel healthy. I did not need Mountain Dew today to keep moving in spite of the exhaustion. It really is a good kind of exhaustion. Maybe there is something to this.