Slight Change of Plans

So truth be told,  I’ve found my grand vision shifting a bit over the last week.  When I started this blog, my goal was to focus on changing smaller habits, and slowly work from a base of “small wins” into implementing larger changes in my life.  Originally, I was going to focus on getting up earlier in the morning to do a few minutes of activity, and give up my decades-long addiction to Diet Pepsi.

Somewhere along the way, I decided to visit some different websites, looking for healthy living inspiration to help me motivate myself into following through on my plan…and stumbled upon the Disney Princess Half Marathon. 

Insert sound of record needle jerk here!

I’ve spent my life as a certified (and probably certifiable!) Disney freak!  I visit the parks about once a year, and have since I was a kid, and yet I had no real idea that runDisney, and their various programs existed.  For me, Disney provides the kind of motivation that brings me to another level.  I am always trying to figure out a way to worm in another trip.  What better way to focus my desire for a healthier lifestyle than to dangle a Disney-based carrot at the end of my proverbial stick?  After all, one lesson I learned from Duhigg is that in order to be successful in creating a habit, you have to create a craving for the reward.  In this case, my craving for all things Disney already exists, so why not build upon it?

While I’m happy to report that I haven’t had a Diet Pepsi in a week (win!), and I am down to only one snooze per morning (semi-win!), my goals have shifted a bit.  My new BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal, which I am totally appropriating from another business book) is to run the Disney Princess Half-Marathon in 9 months, give or take.

How am I going to get there?  It’s a valid question, considering that my current exercise level is a whopping zero minutes per day.  You gotta love the internet, though, because a quick Google search revealed a number of training plans for people just like me.  After some internal debate between the Galloway plan and Couch25K, I ended up going with the Couch 2 5K plan to start with.  Honestly, I love the idea of following a specific training plan, because on my own I would have no idea where to begin. 

I’ve started the Couch 2 5K plan, and after 3 run/walk training sessions, I am not dead yet!  In fact, I’ve felt surprisingly good after each session!  On alternate days, I’ve blown the dust off my old Wii Fit, and am doing the strength training and yoga exercises for 25-30 minutes.  Every spare moment in between, I am reading blog entries about the Princess Half, watching YouTube videos of the race, and mentally planning my outfit for the day that I, too, am RUNNING through Cinderella castle!