Personal 9-Week Challenge Before Our Youth Rally

On November 7th, we will be hosting our fourth annual youth rally at Iola Baptist Temple.  Along with this rally, we are excited to host a 5k walk/run as well.  Starting this Monday (September 8), I plan on launching a fitness challenge to anyone who wants to participate.  It is a challenge to get healthy in 9 weeks (63 days).  Obviously, you need to make it a long-term, lifestyle change to experience lasting results, but 9 weeks is a very good starting point and a sufficient amount of time to train for a 5k from scratch (if I'm not mistaken, "Couch to 5K" has a 9-week program).

I am also trying to get a simple website up with some tips and research information that I have gathered that may help.  The website, although it won't be ready till sometime next week, is www.exercisethyself.weebly.com. I hope to have it set up as a place where everyone can share their training progress and get advice.  Suggested workouts from the website will also be posted on our Facebook page each week.

Finally, I am going to lead by example with something I hope will be motivating.  Entering into a high-mileage (for me) portion of my training for some upcoming ultra marathons I plan to run, I decided to give myself some personal challenges and post frequent updates on this blog.  Here are a few of my goals for the next 9 weeks:

1.  Lose 20 lbs.  I've been holding on to a bunch of extra weight I need to get rid of.  Through the increased mileage, and better diet, I will try to lose an average of 1 pound every 3 days.  That is a pretty realistic goal!

2.  Run Across Kansas (sort of).  I looked it up, and if I averaged 7-8 miles per day, I could theoretically run across Kansas in 9 weeks.  I won't really be running across Kansas!  I'll just log each run, and give weekly reports on this blog showing exactly where I would be at that point if I were running across the state (hope that is not too disappointing.  It would be neat to actually run across Kansas, but not this time!)

3. Run a 50 miler before the youth rally.  I want a rematch with the Prairie Spirit Trail 100 next March, so in training for that, I plan on entering the PST Fall Classic 50 on October 24.