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It was at some point last year that Sundry mentioned, either in a post or comment on a post the name of a pedometer she'd been using.

Now there's a whole post I could write about how inspiring it's been reading about Linda's life as she's become uber-awesomely fit and healthy and made so many positive changes in her life and how that's inspired me to look at my fitness and there's a whole other post I could write about the pedometer and how much I've enjoyed using it and tracking my steps but instead of writing those two posts I've just written this incredibly long sentence and now I need to take a breath so here's some punctuation.

I've talked before about how my goal of daily exercise has been something I'm really glad I'm doing and something that has changed me for the better in a number of ways, but I don't think I could have predicted how that idea of "I'm going to try to do at least a little bit of exercise every day this year" would turn into me deciding to challenge myself in a way I maybe have always wanted to but never thought I actually would.

At some point in August, C-Dawg mentioned that she wanted to work on her fitness and that she was going to sign up for a learn to run/beginner run/whatever you want to call it clinic. When she told me, I liked the idea of us doing something together even though we're an entire continent's width away from each other so I told her I'd sign up for one too.

So I did. I signed up for a local learn to run clinic.

There's an entire post or ten about how that's going and what it's like and I know I keep saying there are entire posts worth of things to talk about and then I don't, but I will talk about this one. But this post isn't so much about the act of learning to run, (or, in my case, learning how to run so slowly little old ladies can pass me with their walkers) but is more about how you never know how one thing can lead you down a road to something bigger and unexpected and how one small thing can, over time, turn into you finding out how proud of yourself you can be.

My year so far, physically speaking? Has gone something like this:

-Started off the year still recovering from a car accident, but wanting to try to get back into shape.
-Decided to buy a pedometer to find out how close to the "magical" 10,000 steps a day I was getting.
-Realized I was walking a good amount of steps each day and when someone mentioned the upcoming Times Colonist 10K, decided to sign up to walk it.
-Amazed by how awesome it felt to accomplish said 10K
-Signed up for another 10K
-Signed up for a learn to run clinic
-Started to run (albeit slowly)

If you'd told me in January I'd be participating in a 10k in April and signing up for a learn to run clinic in September I would have told you there was no way I'd be able to do it. But I have and I did and I am and I can't help but wonder what awesome things I might challenge myself to do next.