It’s just been one day since I posted my plan for losing weight this year. I knew when I posted that as the year progressed I would have to make changes to the plan depending on circumstances at the time. For example, it should be pretty easy to plan my menus for Monday through Friday, but planning for the weekends too far in advance will be difficult because we often don’t know our weekend plans until the last minute, or we know the basic plan but aren’t sure where we will be eating. Or where I have exercise on the plan for twice a day, once in the morning when I get up and before I go to work and again in the afternoon when I get home from work, on snow days, that would turn into just once a day, after I get up, but I would do a longer workout then. When I wrote the plan, I didn’t realize I’d be making alterations so soon.

I laid out my exercise plan, including which DVDs I would use for my morning routines and my afternoon routines. The plan includes lots of walking (a mile in the mornings and two miles in the afternoon, Monday – Friday, four miles Saturday morning, and three miles Sunday morning) and some toning (about 10-15 minutes during the morning workouts). I’m already going to have to change the plan to accommodate something I had never even considered was a possibility when I wrote the plan.

My daughter-in-law Ashley has decided it would be a good idea to participate in a 5K run. Lexington offers several throughout the year. She has managed to talk at least Nicole, Theresa, and I into doing this 5K run with her. Yes, you read that right. Me and a 5K run. For those of you who know me, you should be well aware that’s not something that is my normal thing by a long shot. My brother (who has been an inspiration in my weight-loss journey, having lost 145 pounds himself) participated in some 5K events last year. While proud of him for doing so, I remember when he told me that running these events was not something he’d ever seen himself doing until he lost that weight, I laughed and told him that while I was happy losing the weight, I still didn’t see myself doing anything like that. And now, here I am, willing to run in a 5K.

So, why am I doing this? For one thing, I know from firsthand experience that if you have a support system for your goals, you’re more likely to stick to them. That’s the main reason I share my weight-loss journey; it helps me stick to my goal if I feel accountable to somebody else. If Ashley wants to do this, she’s more likely to be successful if she has support, and since she asked us to run with her, we’re that support. Things like this are easier with a group, and this experience will be good for all of us. Another reason is that she was very enthusiastic when she started talking about it, and her enthusiasm was contagious. Finally, because of her contagious enthusiasm, I just thought, “Why not?” I remembered the conversation with my brother (and had to laugh again) and decided that it would be good to be able to say that while this was not something I ever thought I’d do, I actually did do it.

We’ve decided that we aren’t concerned with placement in the 5K (though none of us would prefer to be the last to finish). Our goal for this beginning 5K is to finish. In order to do that, we realize that we will need some kind of training, and while I already have a workout plan outlined, this is another way to help me stick to that. I’ve already done the three- and four-mile walks, so surely if I work at it, I can do a 3.1-mile run, right? Because we’ve decided to do this, though, and because it does require training, it’s also going to require me to adjust my exercise plan.

I’m not going to change anything about the morning part of the plan. I’ll make my adjustments to the afternoon part of the plan. With the goal of completing a 5K in mind, if the training portion of that is in the afternoon, I’m hoping that gives me the motivation to stick with the exercise plan as a whole. Ashley found a “Couch to 5K” training outline, and we decided that’s probably where we should start. It’s a nine-week outline for 20 to 30 minutes per day. It suggests that the routine be done three times weekly. Therefore, my alteration is rather simple. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, instead of doing the Leslie Sansone two-mile walk in the afternoon, I will do the 5K run training.

Nicole said that Ashley had found a 3K in March and is considering doing that as a “practice” for the 5K. I haven’t had a chance to talk to Ashley about that yet, but it sounds like a good plan to me. I’m pretty sure that she wants to do the 5K in May. That sounds reasonable as well. It gives us time to train, and it gets it done before the weather gets unbearably hot.

If this does indeed come to fruition, I’ll be sure to let you know. If it ends up falling by the wayside, I’ll let you know that as well, but even if it does, as long as I’m still following my now-revised exercise plan, I should still be doing the two things that I want to accomplish by the year’s end, losing weight and getting into better shape. I must confess, though, that I find the idea kind of exciting, so I hope we are able to pull it off. And trust me, that’s something I never thought I’d say about a 5K run.