Trying to keep it interesting...

Virkati

I did a lot of walking last week and I'm finding it to be enjoyable, trackable, and successful for weight loss. But I get bored easily. I have two routes. One is 2.28 miles (3.8 km) and the other is 1.27 miles (2.16 km).

Sooooo I wrote one route name on four small pieces of paper, and the other route name on four more pieces of paper. Each piece of paper has a number telling me how many times this week I need to do that route and the total number of miles I will accumulate by the end of the week. For example...dog park, 3 times, total 6.84 miles. Neighborhood, 6 times, 7.62 miles. Then I had someone pull out a piece of paper for each route. This week I'm supposed to do the dog park 5 times and the neighborhood 4 times, for a total of 16.48 miles (27.47 km).

Suddenly I'm excited again to get out there and get my walking done. It's a big jump from last week which was just over 10 miles, but I LOVE having a new goal!

How do you keep it interesting??

af_wife2004

Due to injuries, I have to walk/run on the treadmill at physical theraphy so I keep changing my play list. I look on jogfm for songs that match my mile/minute. The new songs tend to motivated.

Need2Exerc1se

I look for DVDs that have 10-15 min workouts, then mix and match them so I can get many different workouts.

Virkati

Aaahh the dreaded injuries! I have a stress fracture in my shoulder which is how I wound up having to do a lot of walking and not being allowed to be IN the gym lol. I'm using Pandora. They have workout songs that have boosted my speed because I'm trying to match the tempo of the song!

Liftng4Lis

I change my work out routine about every 3-4 weeks.

lemurcat12

I train for stuff--last year it was mostly runs, this year a bike trip and triathlons.

I also change it up. Last year I hurt my knee and couldn't run for a bit and was down about it, but I came up with an idea to try something new every week. It got me in the gym and doing some meetup stuff (group walks) and trying classes I wouldn't have. Some of the stuff took and some didn't, but I'm glad I did it.

My current new significant interest is weight training which I'm not nearly as comfortable with as cardio, but it's a change and something new to try to understand, and also helps given that I don't really like indoor cardio and it's winter. (Due to the triathlon goals mentioned upthread I'm going to need to figure out how to balance everything, however.)

lemurcat12

Virkati wrote: »

Aaahh the dreaded injuries! I have a stress fracture in my shoulder which is how I wound up having to do a lot of walking and not being allowed to be IN the gym lol. I'm using Pandora. They have workout songs that have boosted my speed because I'm trying to match the tempo of the song!

Oh, absolutely this too. Yesterday I was not motivated to get out of the house to run (I really do hate winter), but then I decided to make a new playlist and was all excited to go. I also can handle riding on a trainer through listening to podcasts--sometimes a nice long time to catch up on old podcasts can be a good thing. I listen to them when walking too (and do a lot of errand-related walking).

Adc7225

I love walking and have discovered how walkable my city is recently . . . or maybe it's just not very drivable! For Dec/Jan it was enough for me to get out in the cold and walk. I did a 200 mile challenge for January and I am doing the same for February - so far so good even with the rain. I will at time take a walk downtown or on that errand that I have been putting off. I have walked various routes like when my car was getting smogged I found some very interesting things to take photos of in an area that I would have never been in - I usually have my phone with me since I am tuned out listening to music so taking photos and sending them to my friends sort of a Where's Adrian game. The great thing about walking is once you get your particulars down it is usually always available.

Virkati

I'm so glad to hear that it's not just me getting out there! Injury-driven, but even when I'm healed I think I'll keep up the walking. I am enjoying being outside WAY more than I ever was on the treadmill!