January wrap-up, February goals

Although I'm verrrrry tempted to forego the goal setting this month, I see the value in it and I'm OCD enough that I don't want to quit doing it so soon. Setting goals doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to achieve them, but it does seem to provide a bit of a push to keep on keepin' on.

And I'm all about keepin' on, as both of you longtime readers know.

One of my long-term goals was to eat from the USDA pyramid. I have done that pretty well. I think I exceeded my calorie goal only one day in January. (The other long-term goal is to run a full marathon this year, and, um, let's just say I'm still not ready for that.)

I had a couple of monthly goals, neither of which I fully achieved.

I thought one of my monthly goals was to do at least 60 minutes of intentional daily activity, but I don't see that in the post where I declared my goals for January. But since I went all month thinking that was one, I'm happy to say I achieved it. Not technically, as there were two days in January where I didn't do a damned thing intentional except sit on my ass. But I logged 33 hours and 40 minutes of exercise last month, which averages more than an hour a day. Yeah, me!

I missed my mileage goal (120 was the target) by many, but I still put in 98.8 – 30 more than December. The outdoor/elliptical split was 62.48/36.32. The elliptical doesn't actually count miles, but it has a little track on it and I can complete a revolution of the track in 9:15-ish. So to estimate elliptical miles, I divided total elliptical minutes by an 18:30 pace and came up with 36 miles of going nowhere.

And I'm sad to say I totally missed the weight-lifting goal. I only said I'd do it twice a week. True confession: I only did it Once. The. Entire. Month. I'm such a whiny baby about strength training. I ripped a 10-minute routine from a fitness magazine and put it in the workout room where I can't miss it. It's one of those routines where you do half a dozen moves that use two sets of muscles at a time. I hesitate to set a goal of doing them even once in February, since I couldn't manage twice-weekly sessions in January. But here goes: Once a week I will knock out a 10-minute strength training workout. That'll be 10 minutes more than the single session I did last month. I'm already feeling the pressure, the pressure!

For February, I think 110 miles is a reasonable distance goal. Better weather (one can hope) should mean more outdoor walking and maybe even a return to outdoor jogging. (I hesitate to call my accelerated perambulation "running.") And it just makes sense to continue the very achievable average of 60 minutes/day intentional activity goal. I don't have a problem with missing a couple days and making it up elsewhere during the month.

The non-fitness goal – resurrecting Project 365 – has gone pretty well. I've posted a photo for each day, but some of them have not been taken with the Rebel. However, I think the BlackBerry camera does a pretty good job. And now that there's a new camera in the family (the onboard on the MacBook) that does some pretty fun stuff, I might be using it once in a while.

I've posted a couple pictures there today that ask an important question: What's happened to our crackers? I invite you to have a look.