Friends, this is my first monthly update and cheerleading session as part of our Stretchy November Project. If you’re just tuning in, I am participating in my first half-marathon—and first walk/run event of any type!—in November 2024. I’ll be offering monthly check-ins for those of you also taking on something big in your own life between now and then.

My husband and my therapist have both asked me about my “training,” and that word still sounds foreign in my mouth. It sounds so official… but I’m not not training.

So, here’s what I’ve been up to. Things I’ve tried:

• The first walk/run in the C25K app (“Couch Potato to 5K,” for anyone who’s never heard of this idea), meaning I’ve run about 8 minutes here in Month One. It’s not nothing!
• Some strength work, including lunges, squats, and deadlifts (there’s another word I’m not wild about…), maybe 3 or 4 or 5 reps of each at a time. And very, very slowly.
• Some more of what I was already doing, like walking on the trails around my neighborhood and getting on the elliptical that lives in my basement. I did one or both of these half the days of this month, which I suspect is more than I would’ve done if it weren’t part of my project. I did them a little more often and for a little longer, too: I can tell you for sure I wasn’t doing 30-40 minutes straight on the elliptical very often before. A more regular stretch in recent months probably would have been about 20 minutes.

I’m sharing this mostly as a record for me to come back to, not because the information itself is that helpful to you. But this is also about you, so here’s what I’ll say: I’m already noticing the power of adding new things into the mix and the power of just nudging along the things I’ve already built into my life.

I might have mentioned this before, but I’m very interested in taking things slow and steady in this endeavor. I have a luxurious timeline, and I am a little wary of injuries or overdoing things. When I tried a one-leg deadlift with a twenty-pound weight, I almost immediately lost my balance. I was following a guide I found on Pinterest, and oh geez did it look easier in the pictures than it felt in real life!

It was an invitation to slow down and put my muscles where my mouth was.

Are there places where you’re being invited to slow down, give things more of the space or time or attention they need? Small things done well can make such a difference. Are you rushing through any of the steps on the way to something big?

And I’m hoping it all does keep building on itself. This month I was also feeling eager for a little perspective. A half-marathon feels pretty looong. The minimum pace for the Good Life Halfsy is 18:20/mile. So I did some research.

At that pace, I just need to move faster than…

• a snail,
• a starfish,
• a seahorse,
• a manatee, or
• a tortoise (of course).

And all told, this race will still take less of a time commitment than…

• the long cut of Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,
• Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet,
• certain showstopper challenges on The Great British Baking Show,
• Wagner’s epic masterpiece Der Ring des Nibelungen, or
• particular games of Monopoly.

As Laura Vanderkam—one of my favorite authors—puts it, “Lowering expectations to the point of no resistance is what makes a bigger things possible.”

Whether I call all this “training” or not is beside the point: I’m on my way to something! It’s not nothing.

Cheers!

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