Day 6

It's currently about 9:30am on this beautiful Saturday morning. My wife is off from work for the weekend because we're celebrating her graduation from Thomas Jefferson University tonight at my mom's house with a party! Today also happens to conveniently be a rest day for us. We didn't need to set an alarm, but we still woke up around 8:00. Not working out feels weird.

Yesterday, we decided to run 5 miles around the Valley Forge Park trail. It's exactly 5 miles around the entire park if you take this trail. We were scheduled for a 4 mile run, but we may be changing our schedule to be able to do a half marathon that's a little sooner and a little cheaper than the one in Philly. We both suffered. The weather was supposed to be rainy, but it turned out being sunny. And hot. That might have been a contributing factor to the suffering. The end of that run put us at 14 miles in 4 days. Too much for me. I told her I'm not doing 4 days of runs in a row ever again.

On the bright side, when I got home I was able to log my final days worth of workouts for the Presidential Active Lifestyle Award that I signed up for 8 weeks ago and encouraged you all to join me. I only had 2 people sign up, but I'm pretty sure neither followed through. Yet. Here's what I got from it...

I got more than that super cool award, though. Not tangible, of course, but getting things isn't always tangible. I learned stuff about myself. I learned that in 8 weeks, I can work out for 45 hours and 45 minutes. That's just under 2 full days of exercise! I really feel like I earned this award because I changed my lifestyle to be active. I did exactly what this award was created to do.

Now, since I earned this award, I had the option to try it again or to move up to the Presidential Champions set of awards. You can earn Bronze, Silver, and Gold medals in this group of awards. The bronze award, which I am going for first, is 40,000 points. After my 8 weeks, I only need 15,249 points to earn it.

I must that although this challenge may be silly and feel like you're back in middle school gym class, it motivated me and kept me on track. My wife jokes that she wanted to participate because "damnit, I want those stinkin' gold stars!" Right back to middle school, right?

I still have my group on the website and encourage anyone who wants to be more active to join the challenge and try to earn the Presidents Active Lifestyle Award. There is a link and group number on the right bar to join.