February Fitness Challenge

So an old high school friend of mine lives in Virginia and is a fitness manager for their local YMCA. She's a little over 1 year post baby no. 2 and it sounds like she's just starting to really get her routine down for exercise. She posted on Facebook that she has challenged herself to workout every day in February.

Now realizing that these sorts of ventures are hard to do when you're doing them alone, I told her I would join her...sort of an accountability thing. I know that it would be easier if we lived in the same town, but no such luck...so virtual workout partners will have to suffice. It seems she's already faced a few challenges due to unexpected family "things", but I think she's still on track...as am I! I believe the key for me will be my definition of exercise. Some days will be hard due to our daily schedule here, so I'm wondering if a hike at the nature park or playing ninja outside with Brayden for 1.5 hrs would count as exercise??? Somebody say yes so I don't feel bad.

Here's how I've done so far:
1st - 3 mile run followed by a body pump class
2nd - 3.5 mile run (and I "hiked" with Brayden around a mile loop trail, there were stairs involved too!)
3rd - 2000 yd. swim
4th - spin class followed by a very slack body pump class

Tomorrow I'm going to try for a "longer" run. So far I'm really only running about 25-35 minutes at a time with a 45 minute run being my longest some time in December. Hopefully I'll be able to get 45-50 minutes in tomorrow. I wish we had a closed track or indoor track at the gym that I could take Brayden to. Then he could ride his bike while I ran and I could keep an eye on him. There's really no track or trail around here set up like that. Since our treadmill is in the garage, I need to lean on Tim to get it fixed so that I can run while Brayden rides his bike or plays.

I've noticed that after each baby, the point at which I start to feel myself again seems to have a correlation to when I start cutting back on the breast feeding. So for the past week or two, I've started to feel better and better. I'm getting more sleep, I'm not exhausted all day, I'm not constantly stuffing my face with food and I'm still staying hydrated. Hopefully within the next few weeks this will prove to be the case and other than time, there won't be anything too big to keep me from fitting a regular workout in.