By Raven Bautista, staff writer
I haven’t been very active during or before the quarantine, but doing nothing isn’t going to cut it for me. As the days go by, looking at my monitor every day, I felt mentally that this is life. However physically I’m going to slowly turn into a koala. So I thought to myself, “I should go out and do some exercising to be more physically fit and energetic in the morning”. From there, my 7 day challenge of running a mile a day began.
Day 1 was a very stressful day to start off on. A Saturday isn’t a day you would wake up at six in the morning. Out of all the tired people in my household, my dog was the only one excited to be up. Taking my dog with me, I ran around my block and was dying for air. My legs were itchy after due to my blood flow increasing. The time it took me to run to the finish was 30 minutes, which actually felt longer than that when I was out there.
Day 2, tired as always but got more energetic once I got ready. My body adapted faster in waking up early, but super tired after running as always. However, I started to catch my breath a bit more and sprint a tiny bit longer allowing me to finish in about 25 minutes. A bit proud of myself, but now my breakfast starts to consist of a bottle of water.
On the 3rd day, I was more energetic to the point where I just got up and got ready to run. All the energy in the morning, but still slow at running. My dog didn’t break a sweat while I was drenched in it. 25 minutes again for my run, but I feel lighter this time than the other days. I have a bit of hope that my lungs will start to let me run the full mile non-stop.
By the 4th day, due to covid infections occurring nearby, I had to stop. It was a bit devastating to me, especially when I was up at 5 in the morning and looked like I was prepared to run a marathon. But, that didn’t stop me from doing something to make up for it. Instead of running I have decided to do 50 push ups and sit ups, and a bit of yoga. My legs were starting to hurt from the previous 3 days, but now I got to focus more on my upper body. Today was tiring, but not as tiring as running the mile.
On the 5th day, my body was sore, but by the 6th day the pain started to go away and I still continued to do my bit of exercise. I even did extra push ups and sit ups from not being so sore.
The final day, I was a bit hyped about this being the final day of the challenge and did 50 push ups and sit ups to end strong. Once I did my last couple sets, I completed this extra challenge, disappointed I couldn’t finish the running but proud to exercise.
After doing the challenge, I feel lighter and my lungs are more open. I didn’t believe that I would have been able to do the full mile or complete the challenge, however I had some faith after seeing me completing it in 3 days. If there wasn’t a pandemic, it would have been easily passed.
The biggest benefit I felt was being more overall energetic throughout the day. I felt lighter and made me feel healthier. I kept the little exercises and will continue to do them. For running the mile, I would most likely do this challenge again just to be more physically active over just sitting in front of my monitor most of the time.
