TEN MILLION STEPS & STILL COUNTING (or how I learned to love my pedometer)

Since Janelle bounces between the morning and evening Metabolic Trainings based on her schedule, you all know her.  In case you have a hard time remembering names, Janelle is the woman you may have seen walking all over the Village at all times of day.  Janelle is the woman who runs around like the energizer bunny during cardio intervals in our trainings so that her pedometer will record her steps.  But most of all Janelle is the Warrior who makes us smile because one year ago she set out to achieve a monumental goal and not only did she succeed, but she transformed herself along the way.  Here is Janelle's story in her own words.

My pedometer and I met on 11/4/13. We started out slowly building our relationship for the first few months and then guess what? It gave me 1 Million Steps and a great badge to prove it. I was hooked. I wanted that 10 Million Step badge in the worst way. Together we figured out a plan to achieve that goal before one year - 1 Million steps a months should do it.
By July, we decided we needed to build a buffer of 200K steps in order to balance out the September out of town trip where 30K+ steps per day just could not happen, especially on the 3 days of airline flights. By September, we designed an Excel spreadsheet and were now tracking daily steps to ensure success (anal...most definitely). We prefer the words like commitment and dedication.

Still in good shape and ahead of schedule in October, we could smell that badge or maybe it was something else! We had blisters, calluses and quad burn as constant companions. Spent lots of moolah on Epsom Salts & bubble bath. Not to mention how many shoes we were wearing out.

While money might have been the initial motivator ($100 per quarter when minimums are met - and I've got them all), the 18 lbs that are lying out there on the streets of VOC somewhere was a benefit as well.

So just how did we accomplish this? 15K steps in the am (sometimes as early as 4 am - your headlamp is your friend, even if you only hold it in your hand); 3K steps taking the back way to Weber's for more supplies; 5K steps to/from work each day; 10K more after work. Double that on my days off. Kinda crazy, huh? And I still had time for Metabolic / TRX classes!

To end this tirade, let me just say that 10M was achieved on 11/1/14 with 3 days to spare. Two critical things kept me going on this journey, my workout buddy & friend, Lori and heavy carbo loading with my other friend, Mr. Tequila. Sherry asked me what the next goal was going to be but we were too overwhelmed to think about that. So from 11/1 to 11/7 we crashed, floundering & barely making 15K steps per day. With the help of some crazy ladies in Jerome on 11/8 we have decided upon a new goal....the Brian Mickelsen 1/2 marathon in April. Kinda crazy, but it just might be what's next for me and my pedometer. I'm still working on Lori.