Thoughts from the T-Shirt Lady

I apologize for not keeping you up to date on my walking for this idita walk! Things got ahead of me. My last post for this was on the 3rd of March. Today is the 31st - whew where did the time go.

I walked about 4-5 times a week, and finally finished yesterday with 1073 minutes - the minimum was 1049 so I made it! That qualified me for a finishers pin and I ordered a t-shirt with the 2008 logo. Wow!

I kept track of my walking minutes with a chart that was provided. I decided that it was good motivation to have some way of adding up the minutes I walk per week. So I created another copy of the chart with April and May dates. If I can continue to use this tracking method, maybe I will be encouraged to keep going. It would be interesting to see ‘how far’ I can walk.

Sandi

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Last week I mentioned that I was doing the Idita Walk - need to walk 1049 minutes over 2 months - and the month of February was not a good month, as I had surgery and then recuperation.

Now that we are in the month of March, I’m going to have to really get motivated because I have to walk almost every day to make the full number of minutes.

I did walk on Friday for 30 minutes and on Saturday for 36 minutes. So I’m up to 338 minutes.

As promised I will keep you updated. If you are doing this walk, please let me know - we can be a motivation for each other!

Sandi

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Okay, okay, I know what you are thinking - why is she talking about a New Years resolution at the end of February?

Well, I like to give the excuse that life interrupts what we are trying to do.

My New Years resolution was to start walking again. Oh, not just around the house, but an actual routine. I can’t walk outside the house - the driveway is gravelly (?) and I’m afraid I would twist or break my ankle. The road at the end of our driveway is loaded with truck traffic - logging trucks, etc. No way am I going to try and walk there.

My neighbor and I had been walking last year at her church about 4-5 days a week, before the cold weather set in. However the cold weather was not the reason we stopped. There was a man loitering on the grounds, and the last time we walked there - as we were driving out - he was hiding behind a wall that we would have passed, if we had walked another loop. Too scary for me!

Then my sister recommended a structured walk.

It is a “do it yourself” walk.    You register, keep a track of your walking and mail your paper in when your done.  Take a look at the website,  It is a boy scout troop out of Nome Alaska and they started this to raise money for the EMT services in their town. 

Idita Walk Instead of driving a dog sled for 1049 miles, you get to walk for 1049 minutes over a 2 month period (Feb 1 - Mar 31). Which if you do it right, you can walk 30 minutes a day - which is the recommended length of time for exercising, for a total of 35 days or more, and feel that you have accomplished something… a goal…an incentive to exercise, etc…

So with that in mind, I signed up and started my walk on  February 1st. This, then was my new New Years resolution!

So the days that I have walked in Feb are 1,2,4,6,8,9,10,14,27 and hopefully today. Why such a large gap? Well I was on a roll and then had my surgery on the 12th - walking on the 14th was a little too soon - I was really wiped out, waited until the 27th after I had had my 2 week checkup, and am ready to get back in the groove!

So as of the end of the walk on the 27th, I have accumulated 272 minutes. I still have a long way to go, but feel much better and ready!

I’ll let you know how I progress.

If anyone out there has signed up and is also doing the Idita Walk, I’d love to hear from you. We can encourage each other!

Sandi

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