A bet

I am so sore!

Friday of last week Dave and I decided to place a bet. We were in his car driving to Chris and Angela’s house for dinner when the idea came to him.

We’re basically doing this week-by-week and have left it open to change if it needs to be changed. In any one week time Dave and I have to work out a minimum twenty minutes a day for four days per week. Because we’re both lazy and because it’s been a while since either of us have made an honest effort to work out, we decided to start with only this small amount of time and are going to add more in one month if this goes well.

For now, our definition of ‘working out’ is some kind of relatively high-intensity cardio- running, intervals on the elliptical, fast rollerblading, etc. We decided together that golfing 18 holes counts as it’s basically hours of  walking- but only if no beer is consumed. 🙂

Our incentive to keep this up is as follows: if I don’t work out for the minimum amount of time laid out in our bet, then I have to do Dave’s laundry and dry cleaning for one week. I have to make sure that all of his clothes are washed and put away and I have to bring his shirts to the dry cleaners and pick them up. If Dave does not work out the minimum amount of time laid out in our bet, then he owes me $100.

So that’s that! Neither of us want to lose. This bet is set up as a win-win so so far it’s been working out well- we win as long as we keep working out, and we win in more ways than one.

Anyway, I’ve done a little bit of everything so far. Yesterday I did a long warm-up on the treadmill and then jogged for two miles varying between 5-6mph. I pushed myself a little by upping it to 6.5 toward the end and am pretty happy with how it went. Considering it’s been a long time since I’ve jogged two miles I think that it went pretty well. The day before that I rollerbladed around the residential areas of our neighborhood, and the day before that I did twenty minutes of intervals on the elliptical.

Surprisingly my knees haven’t been bothering me at all- and I think that it’s because I have been varying it so far. I really want to get to the point in which I can run 5k and can run it well because I want to start running competitively again. I really want to get to the point in which my legs are strong enough so that my knees stop hurting after frequent runs. When I was younger and in shape my knees never bothered me. They didn’t start bothering me until I started putting on weight and stopped working out.

It’s so nice to have somebody to be doing this with- to help push me. So many times I’ve tried to start running again and so many times I’ve stopped after only a couple of days. This bet is going to make me continue because I don’t want to fail- I don’t want to let myself down and I don’t want to let Dave down.