100 Mile March…Or My Own Version

My workplace is always trying to be healthier (we have a great fitness center and trainer, free Weight Watchers,  quarterly gift cards for healthy habits, only diet sodas in the vending machines, etc.). It's pretty awesome actually. So this year they're promoting the 100 Mile March again. The idea is just to commit to walking 100 miles over the course of the month of March.

Last year, since I had lost a good amount of weight (like 55 pounds) by March and I felt pretty good, I decided to try it.

It was a dismal failure.

I walked every day for the first week. Seven days. My total distance walked? 1.5 miles. That's over a period of seven days COMBINED.

I was so disappointed.

I really did try, but I could only walk two minutes at a time before having an asthma attack and feeling like I was going to vomit.

I had no idea at the time that I was actually suffering from severe cardiac asthma and that my heart valve had grown shut and I was basically a walking heart failure bomb. I didn't find that out until June, and then had heart surgery in August to fix it. But in March, all I knew was that I sucked. That I couldn't even walk, even after losing so much weight.

It was seriously depressing.

So this year, to ramp up slowly and avoid such devastating failure, I'm making my own March. I'm doing a 30 Mile March.

30 Mile March?

Totally doable.

It's the 13th and I've logged right around 12 miles, so I'm perfectly on track. Between my Jawbone UP and my Map My Workout app, I'm doing a good job of getting extra steps in, along with taking short but trackable walks, like trekking a couple blocks with my employees for lunch, or walking around a cemetery while I wait for my girlfriend to get off work.

Even though the weather still sucks, we managed to take a great hike every day Friday through Monday last weekend. Sure, the trails were basically bogs and we had to slog and slide through six inches or more of mud in some places, but it was awesome to be outside DOING something.

I can't recall ever being in the woods before spring or summer. It's been cool to see the green moss peeking out from beneath the melting snow, and to see the trails without the curtains of leaves. The woods feel so open and bare without leaves. I kind of like it.

So I may not be confident enough for a 100 Mile March yet, but I'll do 30 miles. I'm ready for that at least. And I walked farther the first day this year than I did the entire first week last year.

That's progress!