This is how fitness goals get derailed

GREAT ALOHA RUN

My friend Tina and I started walking together a few months ago, and our aspirations suddenly grew into this grand idea of participating in the Great Aloha Run in February (8.2 miles). We set a schedule to meet every Sunday.

We asked my husband, a former UH athlete-turned-coach, for training tips. We were thinking of a loose agenda, like, Increase your distance or time by ___ increments every week. 

I should have known better, because this is a man who loves to calculate and record his split times for fun. He came up with a more complicated program for us that involved heart rates, followed by an ever-increasing  series of calisthenics to do after the walk.

We tried to obey, but we stopped fairly quickly, after two Sundays or something. In our defense, things just got overly ambitious and complicated.

People’s children came along. People’s dogs came, and dogs zig-zag, pull, and take pee breaks. The holidays came. People fought head colds. 

After Tina and I reconnected in early January, we congratulated ourselves on simply waking up and being ready to walk at 8 a.m. on a Sunday. We think we’re heroes for walking for one whole hour.

The kids come, or the kids wait in the house. The dogs come, and it just is what it is. A walk with these dogs is at cross-purposes with serious training.

Now we call it what it is: a slow, one hour pet walk for fresh air, followed by social hour over a nice cup of coffee for another hour. So the thing that started as a footrace has become a coffee talk, but that’s OK, too.

I CHANGED MY MIND, LIKE, 30 TIMES

OK, 30 times is an exaggeration, but this sure was an indecisive day and I take full responsibility. My husband and I got into the car to take a walk one Sunday morning in Nu`uanu. After, we said we’d go eat lunch at Ala Moana Center. All of these were my suggestions, with him being completely agreeable to every change.

Here are all the iterations of the plan:

Original: Walk Nu`uanu, eat at Ala Moana Center
Walk Nu`uanu, drop gift at friend’s house in Makiki, eat at Ala Moana Center
Walk Makiki, drop gift off in Makiki, eat at Ala Moana
Drop gift off first, walk Makiki, eat at Ala Moana
Drop gift off, eat at Ala Moana first, walk mall after like retirees
Eat at friend’s house in Makiki because he so generously insisted, walk Makiki after
Final: Eat at friend’s house in Makiki, socialize for three hours, go home, never walk

Great walk! Anyone want me as their training partner?