My champion year of self-improvement: Fitness

Fitness is not a topic I ever thought I’d have anything to say about. Over the years, I've had a go at cycling and gym classes but nothing stuck. By the time I set my goals in 2019, my fitness level was at zero and I knew I wanted to be fitter. What follows is an insight into how I made and achieved my goal to jog 5 km.

The idea of developing a basic level of fitness came when I was considering what my dream life would be like. I know that if I am going to be happy and healthy, fitness must be a part of it. When I made my other goals, this one was just ‘To be fitter’. Out of all of my goals for February 2020, this was the one that I put off starting and was the vaguest. In July last year, my friend Toni and I met for dinner and a catch up. She was on her own journey of self-improvement and had started jogging. She was talking about how she was nervous at first but was beginning to feel more confident and seeing results. I didn’t agree to anything that night but the more I thought about it, the more the 90’s Nike campaign rang in my head. 

“Quit making excuses, putting it off, complaining about it, dreaming about it, whining about it, crying about it, believing you can’t, worrying if you can, waiting until you are older, skinnier, richer, braver, or all around better. Suck it up, hold on tight, say a prayer, make a plan & JUST DO IT.”

I realised the reason I hadn’t started was that this was the goal I thought I was most likely to fail at. If I was going to visualise success, my goal needed to be clearer. Having never had a fitness goal before and starting at ‘fitness level zero,’ I knew that my best chance of achieving anything was to make a SMART goal.

Specific: If you have followed my journey so far, you know that I was on a tight budget in 2019; whatever I was going to do, it needed to require little to no investment. I spend a lot of time working at a desk so I liked the idea of being outdoors. I had read that jogging had significant physical and mental health benefits and I had enjoyed it when I had tried jogging before and so the goal began: To jog.

Measurable: I had 2 choices for a measurement; I could aim to jog for a certain amount of time or I could aim to jog a set distance. I knew I wanted to be outside so I chose to measure it in distance. 

Achievable: I was painfully aware that I was starting my fitness journey from the beginning and I was worried that if I aimed too high, I would struggle to start. I also had a lot going on in 2019 so I didn’t want to set a goal that would require hours and hours of training. I did, however, want something that would be a significant personal milestone. I thought if I were able to jog 5 km, it could be accomplished several times a week. 5 km was achievable and, if I stuck with it, was enough to maintain a healthy amount of exercise per week.

Relevant: ‘To jog 5 km’ would support me being happy and healthy in 2020. 

Time based: I was already working on a 12-month plan that would take me to the end of February 2020 so that became my finish line.

My vague plan to be fitter became my SMART goal: To jog 5 km by February 2020.

My friend Toni had told me about the weekly running event she was doing at a park close to where we went to school. I was nervous about going to an organised sports event (for the first time ever) but she was raving about how friendly and encouraging everyone was and inspired me to give it a go. I was assured it was a run, not a race, and in July I took part in my first Park Run.

That first week, I was incredibly self-conscious but Toni was right about the people - everyone was friendly and supportive. It was just the atmosphere that I needed to get started. Every Saturday morning for 5 months, I got up and with Toni, walked/jogged a 5 km route. Slowly, my fitness and confidence grew. I had started.

By Christmas, I had done 20 park runs… and I was enjoying it. I had made some marginal gains on my walk/jog ratio but if I was going to make significant progress towards my goal, I had to start jogging during the week and pushing myself to jog for longer each time. In the UK, the NHS have a free app that you can download called ‘couch to 5k’ that coaches you for 9 weeks so you gradually build up to be able to jog 5 km. That was what I needed to do but I wasn’t sure I would have the motivation to get myself out three times a week if left to my own devices. I didn’t want to do it on my own. 

To support my goal to improve my diet and lose weight, I had joined a slimming group in the village next to mine. As luck would have it, a running club met in the same building on a Thursday and I noticed before Christmas that they had a couch to 5 km training group starting in January. I signed up and started an 8-week course of coached continuous improvement in a low-pressure group of beginners. Running around in January and February evenings was dark, cold and wet but in addition to my Park Run’s, twice a week for 8 weeks I turned up to run with this group and I noticed myself jogging a bit further and a bit faster each week.

This picture is the last night of the 8-week course. On the last Saturday of February 2020, I jogged the full 5 km Park Run route. It’s not fast and it’s not pretty but I can now jog 5 km which is 5 km more than I could in February 2019.

When lock-down started and Park Run was temporarily cancelled, I didn’t want to lose my progress so I started jogging in a loop from my house a few times a week. This was a welcome break from being indoors and has meant that all my hard work didn't go to waste. The great thing about having a SMART goal is that it’s really clear when you have achieved it and it is a great feeling. I am proud of myself for turning up that first week of Park Run, for signing up for the 8-week course and for sticking with it.

In my next article, I’ll be looking at my goal to complete the work on my house with a focus on how I found balance and made time.

This month, I have committed to jogging 26.2 miles in 30 days, raising money for the Rotherham branch of Samaritans where I volunteer. Each day, around 16 people take their life in the UK and Ireland. During the next hour, Samaritans will receive 600 calls for help; you can help those calls be answered by supporting the Samaritans below.