Week 1 | 12 Week Fitness Challenge

After re-reading “The 12 Week Year” by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington, I decided to embark on a 12 week fitness challenge to get back into shape after childbirth. Here’s how week 1 panned out.

Week 1 Workout Plan

My goal of this “12 week year” is to run 3 miles in one run. To achieve this, I made a weekly plan.

  • Run: 0.25 mi run x 2
  • Stationary bike: x 3
  • Plank: Every day
  • Walk: Every day

Week 1 Workouts

  • Monday: Walk, Plank (20 sec)
  • Tuesday: Walk, Plank (20 sec), Bike (15 min), Run (0.25 mi)
  • Wednesday: Walk, Plank (20 sec), Bike (15 min), Run (0.5 mi)
  • Thursday: Walk, Plank (30 sec), Bike (15 min), Run (0.25 mi)
  • Friday: Walk, Plank (30 sec), Bike (15 min)
  • Saturday: Walk, Plank (30 sec)
  • Sunday: Walk, Plank (30 sec)

Workout Totals

  • Run: 0.25 mi run x 2, 0.5 mi run x 1 ✅
  • Stationary bike: x 4 ✅
  • Plank: Every day ✅
  • Walk: Every day ✅

Conclusion

  • Weight Change: 0 lbs
  • Waist Change: 0 inches

The first week started out pretty well! I was intending on starting slow, but 0.25 miles was a lot shorter than I expected (just 3 minutes or so!), so I managed to fit in a 0.5 mile run. I think this will adjust week 2’s running goals!

Planks went from 20 seconds to 30 seconds. When I started a few weeks ago, just 10 second was very hard, but now 20 seconds is a breeze, so I can really feel the difference there! Hopefully next week, I’ll be going from 30 seconds to 40 seconds!

I continue to walk 2~8 miles a day, going out at least once a day with the baby. When we have help, I try to fit in a quick stationary bike ride.

I joined Strava, and figured out I could do a few challenges every month. I’ll see if these challenges will motivate me to run/walk more in December! It’s a little annoying that data doesn’t auto-sync from my Apple Fitness app to it (I have to manually sync), but I like the data it generates!

According to the app, I logged 34 miles of outdoor walks over 13 hours and 21 minutes, 1 hour of bike riding, and 0.76 miles of running over 10 minutes this week!

Hiroko Nishimura
AWS Community Hero. Special Education teacher turned IT Engineer turned Technical Writer. Author "AWS for Non-Engineers" (Manning Publications). Technical Instructor "Introduction to AWS for Non-Engineers" (LinkedIn Learning).

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