Yay me!

With one final three-mile run last night, I met the final requirements for a President's Fitness Challenge Gold Medal.

I started this in October, 2008, just a week before I ran the Army Ten-Miler for the first time. Since then, I've kept track of time spent running, swimming, weight training, martial arts, cardio work and even walking. It's simple: Do the exercise then log in and plug in what you did and for how long. It keeps a tally and eventually you can earn awards. It's a great way to track your progress and at least in my case, it motivates me to get out there because I feel slack if I don't log some work every few days or so.

My proudest achievement: Per the records, since starting, I've logged 76 hours running. (Would that be 152 hours for someone with two legs?) At my average distance pace of 10 minutes per mile, that's 456 miles.

I also logged 17 hours of swimming and I can easily swim a mile now without stopping.

Lagniappe gets credit too, of course. I also logged all of our walks that were over half an hour in duration, and together we logged over 90 hours of walking and hiking, to include quite a bit of time spent on the Appalachian Trail and Maryland Heights across the Potomac from Harpers Ferry. If you've climbed to the Old Stone Fort as we've done numerous times, you'll know that the hike's no joke. We worked, and he earned his own Gold Ribbon, which is on the way along with my medallion. We celebrated last night with a glass of Bushmills for me, and a deer bone for him. Very happy.

Now that I've hit the Gold Medal on this program, I'm at a loss for something else to work on. I can't stop now, and I'm in search of another workout program. Any of you have any suggestions?