January Challenge: Planking -

The short version is this: I planked every day for the month of January and the only thing that happened is that I hate planking now. 

The longer version is this: 

I bought the Commit30 planner this year and each month there is a place to create your own challenge. It's the simplest thing, and I could have totally just put a check mark by each date on another calendar, but this is special! It has circles for each day, and reflection, and a place for a prize! 

My goal was to get up to 2:00 minutes, and to do it early in the day to get it over with. I started at about 45 seconds and it seemed easy enough. It was miserable, but doable. I set the timer on my phone and you'd think I'd want a distraction, but I just bore my eyes in to the timer screen and watched the seconds tick up and assumed that each second represented me becoming a fucking bad-ass planker. 

Pffft. As if three minutes is real. 

Why planking you ask? In the middle of the story. I don't know. I read it was good for you and seemed liked an easy January challenge. No supplies or much time needed. 

Literally right in the middle of the month I hit my highest time without really trying at 1:32. I assumed I would continue to add a few seconds each day and do a final push at the end of the month to 2:00. 

But on the 16th and 17th and 18th something was happening... I hated planking. Like for no good reason dreaded those few seconds of the day and didn't push myself because of it. Assuming I was going through something I just chilled in to some 30ish second planks. Is anyone still reading this. This is not very interesting. 

And the month progressed the same way. Hating. Miserable. I actually did feel stronger but I didn't give a rip because somehow the whole thing had gotten in my head. Then I got sick at the end and I still planked because I wanted to fill in ALLLLL my circles dammit. 

Incidentally January happened to be the longest month of my life. I couldn't wait for this self-inflicted torture to end. I still got it done each day - but just barely. One day I planked for like 16 seconds. But I filled in my circle, because technically I. Did. It.  

THEN on the very last day of the month I completely forgot to plank. Which seems peculiar to me - how do you forget that you hate something? Like hate is real. So on Feb 1 I decided to tackle a two minute plank. And you'll be surprised - assuming you are still awake - that I did it. TWO MINUTES. I tricked myself. I put on my head phones and put on Dennis Lloyd's Nevermind. I turned it up real loud and just tried hard to do it. I opened my eyes at 1:43 and I stared at the clock till 2:00  and cursed myself for this horrible challenge, almost threw up, and then I filled in my Jan 31 circle and closed the book on that stupid heinous idea. 

I chose not to take a pic of my Commit30 January Challenge pages because I wrote a bunch of other personal stuff on there. And this blog is personal enough without a photo of my words to myself. 

Here is what I learned. 

1) I should have one rest day each week if I choose a strength challenge. A monthly challenge should be comprehensive - it doesn't mean I have to do something every day for 30 days. It means just have a plan. 

2) I don't like planking. I thought it may be so easy and it could just be part of my daily routine. But we need a break. Forever.

I reflected these things in my planner. I didn't award myself a physical prize because I had never picked something early on and so I decided my reward was that February arrived. 

Stay tuned for February's challenge. It's equally boring.