36,000 Minutes

How do you measure your progress? In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee? ☕️ (Sing along now, y’all).

Check Ins

In Camp Gladiator we celebrate check ins. Getting up, getting out of bed, getting dressed, remembering hygiene 🤣 (deodorant is important), and making it to the workout daily makes us feel accomplished. 💪 We celebrate check in #1, #50, #100, the same way we celebrate check in #1000+. We celebrate the same way because showing up your first day is just as difficult as showing up on day 1000 (sometimes even more so). Getting started is a struggle. Staying disciplined is a struggle. It is a struggle I choose to engage in, because the alternative (being sedentary, overweight, and unhappy) is also a struggle.

Today is a celebration

Today, I hit 600 check ins. That is 600 hours or 36,000 minutes of choosing to show up for myself.

In the past 36,000 minutes, I’ve made a lot of changes. I’ve met my very best friends, tested my limits, and seen marked improvement in my physical performance. (Well, I would hope so. If I hadn’t seen improvement after 600 hours of effort and sweat, I would huddle in the fetal position crying. 😜). I may never be the fastest runner. Considering how I feel about running, this is completely okay with me. However, I can keep up reasonably well and most of the time, I can still talk during the workout. Much to the trainers’ chagrin. 😏

How do you celebrate progress?

I enjoy external accountability, so a check in is a highly motivating way to keep track of when I should celebrate. You may not need that type of accountability. Maybe you want to hit a certain weightlifting goal, or mile time, or another metric. Perhaps your progress is how many days you have kept from hitting ‘snooze’.

Whatever your goal, how do you celebrate getting closer to it?

My personal preference for the moment is a celebratory coffee with my friends. (Don’t worry, I’m working my way through The Macro Barista‘s recipes to stay within my macros.)

So…cheers, y’all! Cheers to another day of choosing what is best for us! Cheers to another day of showing up and doing the work to become better. Cheers to one more day we get to wake up before dawn, be eaten alive by mosquitos, breathe the hot, muggy, humid air, and basically run a 5K with weight stations mixed in. I’m ready to wake up and celebrate. How about you?