One foot in front of the other.

-by Jaime Willis

(psst: Today at 12:30pm EST is your last chance to donate to win the iPad. Thank you to everyone who donated -- I was able to raise $300 for Charity: Water and the winner was Debby Vig! See our Charity:Water donation page here!)

In January, I declared to the world (or at least our facebook and blog following) that I was going to run FIFTY 10K (6.2 mile) races this year. That was one a week for the entire year, and two weeks of "vacation."

This past Sunday, I ran my 29th* 10K race -- the Marine Corps 10K. There were lots of races I wanted to run this year, but the timing wasn't right, so this is literally the first 10K I've run as an actual race. (With Medals. I'm a big fan of medals!) *Update:  I've now run 31 races.*

If you are doing the math right now, you are probably noticing that 29 is a little far away from 50, especially with 9 weeks left in this year. I know! I did the math too. The summer wasn't great for my health goals -- I was busy and DC was *hot* -- and those are both excuses.

Nine weeks, 21 races. Still totally doable. So, this weekend, I plotted and planned out how I am going to do it. Monday and Thursday evenings, Saturday mornings mostly. With several travel plans in there, I am rearranging this and that to fit this into my schedule. If all goes well, I'll finish a week early. If not, well, I have an extra week to try to make it.

I've said to folks before and I'll say it again, I really want to finish this goal. Even if this means that I am walking multiple 10Ks in a row on December 31st, that's what I'll do.

Life is like this really. You are always too busy. There are always extenuating circumstances. But if you really want something, just put one foot in front of the other and keep walking until you hit the finish line.

Goal Update: Health Edition

-By Jaime Willis

I have 3 major health-related goals for 2011 -- let's check in and see how I am doing.  Thanks to Sean "Positivity" Powell for nudging me to update.

1) Running 50 10k 'races' by the end of the year.

2) Completing a sprint triathlon on August 14, two days before my big "6th anniversary of my 29th Birthday" (Yes, it is up to you to do the math on that one).

3) Continuing to lose weight and reach my goal. 

I've made progress on all three fronts.

As of now, I've run/walked/ellipticaled through 23 10ks.  That's over 138 miles in the last seven months.  To reach my goal, I need to run another 27 10ks in the next 22 weeks.  This is totally achievable!  I'll have to start doubling up on 10ks (2 per week).  Since I've done that in the past, I know I can do it again.  I've committed to running a 10k this weekend, and 1-2 more before my birthday.  After the triathlon is over, I'll really get back to my 'normal' routine and I should be able to knock these out and be back on track.

10k Milestone Goals (to help keep me accountable throughout the rest of the year):

End of August:  Have 27 10ks under my belt
End of September: Have 33 completed
End of October: Have 41 completed
End of November: Have 47 completed
End of December: Have run all 50 10ks.

As for the triathlon, I have done the full biathlon distance (biking, then running) twice already.  I've also swam the full distance several times.  I'm not fast, and it's not pretty to watch, but I'm confident that I'll be able to finish the race, barring injury.  I will be training hard this weekend and next, and in two weeks, I'll be reporting back with a medal in my hand.

The losing weight front has been a back and forth struggle -- the weigh-in yesterday after two weeks of "tourist" eating with my visiting sister wasn't pretty.  That said, I am committed to continuing to work on healthy eating and exercise, and I know I'll get myself back on track.  I know when I get busy, my diet is one of the first things I "let go."  With 22 weeks left in the year, I'd like to end 2011 22 pounds lighter than I am now.  This means making my health a priority!  I know I can do it and I'm glad to have all of you keeping me accountable!

Choose Your Own Adventure

-By Jaime Willis

Jaime and Jessica, the newest NC State Graduate!

After a wonderful weekend down in Raleigh, North Carolina watching my mentee graduate from college (woot!) and catching up with a friend, I drove home on Sunday morning. When I got into DC, the weather was gorgeous -- 82 degrees and beautifully sunny.

Choose: Do you scrap your plans to work inside on your computer and go for a run?

I chose to go for a run. Got together my running gear, which hasn't been used in a while, sadly, and headed out the door. I walked and ran another 10k, but when I finished, I was still a mile and a half from home.

Choose: Do you take the bus home or use the extra mileage to walk out your sore muscles?

I chose to walk home, even though the rain clouds were getting more and more ominous by the second.

Choose: Now you are back at the house and sweaty. Do you take a shower or do messy chores first?

I chose to take out the trash and change the kitty litter before cleaning up. And here is where the story gets adventurous. The sky opened up just as I was getting my recycling into the cans outside. I was quickly soaked, so I just continued to put out the trash. Then I notice that the water outside isn't draining, but is instead fountaining down the basement steps into the well of the basement, and INTO MY APARTMENT.

Choose: Do you freak out and get angry that the basement is flooding or do you try to mitigate the damage?

Rainwater pooling into basement well.

I ran back into the house and threw down towels to try to stem the tide of water. I grabbed my wet vac, plugged it in and was able to contain the water to the back hallway of my house, so nothing other than the floor got wet & waterlogged. The rain stopped just minutes after it had begun and I continued to vacuum up water until the vacuum stopped working.

Choose: Do you angrily pout or do you continue to try to solve the problem?

I am not going to lie, things got tense at this stage of the game. After trying a few quick fixes for the vacuum, I determined that either the filter needed to be replaced or the vacuum was dead & I needed a new one. I checked that home depot was still open and ran down there.

Choose: Do you buy just the filter or do you buy a new vacuum?

Obviously, I need a little more skill on creating sandbag
barriers, as this didn't work at all.

I chose to do both. I knew if the filter worked, I could return the vacuum, but if it didn't work and I didn't have another vacuum, I would be furious and home depot would be closed, so I wouldn't be able to do anything else until the next morning. When I returned to the house, the filter replacement worked, and I was able to get all the excess water and clean up outside. I then bleach-mopped the floors where the water spilled in, returned everything to it's rightful place and started washing the soaked towels.

Choose: Do you spend the rest of the evening angry that your evening was derailed by this emergency or are you grateful it wasn't worse?

After a shower, I felt so LUCKY. On the weekends, I am frequently out of town, so I can only imagine what would have happened if I weren't home when the flooding started. Even better, I was *outside* and saw the flooding before it even reached my back door, so I was able to mitigate & slightly control what got flooded in the apartment. I was grateful that Home Depot was still open in my neighborhood at 7pm on a Sunday evening, so I could get the replacement parts I needed to continue repairing the problem. I was grateful that this happened on Sunday, before a week of rainy weather predicted for DC, so I could call my landlords and have them snake the outdoor drains before more rain comes.

Yes, it was annoying that my apartment flooded, but so many things went RIGHT about the flooding, that it was the best possible way to have a bad situation like that happen. I went to bed last night satisfied, remembering that my weekend was almost all great stuff, and slept well. What would you have done -- go to bed angry or go to bed happy?

Matt and I have said over and over again how important it is to CHOOSE your attitude, to ACT instead of REACT, and to limit your negativity about a situation. Think about the last emergency you had to deal with -- could you have made different choices?

How to Fail Without Giving Up

-By Jaime Willis

"Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain."  ~Author Unknown

I've been working towards a big fitness challenge this year - running fifty 10 kilometer 'races.' On Monday, I ran my 15th 10k.  I ran literally the worst time I've ever run on Monday - 81:36.  That is over 13 minutes per mile, when I have run under 9 minutes per mile in my best time ever. 

Negativity is not my thing, but this is not so much negative as it is reality.  Monday, I really sucked at running.  Period. Because I'm a competitive person, being bad at something is really tough.  Because I'm an optimistic person, getting defeated is difficult.  

Achieving your goals means that you have to learn to accept a lot of failure and a lot of defeat without giving up.

The difference is that you can't let your failures and defeat and your EGO stop you from continuing to try, from continuing to reach your goals.  Yea, I said ego.  It is definitely a blow to your ego to realize that you aren't immediately awesome at something you want to do.  You have to admit to yourself that there is something you want that is going to take a lot of hard work to get accomplished.  

Here's the thing - you have to suck first before you get to be good at something.  There is no cheat code in life.  There is no movie montage through the difficult training that happens first.  You literally have to slog through each and every day of being bad at something in order to get better at it. 

Take Derek Sivers.  Derek wanted to be a singer.  Derek couldn't sing.  He took voice lessons, he starting touring with a band, he practiced, he mentored with an Indian vocalist, he recorded albums.  Over the course of FIFTEEN years, Derek learned how to sing.  That is 5,478 days of working at his goal, many  which Derek was told that he wasn't a singer and should just give up.  He didn't give up, he became a singer.  

When I started to get healthy in 2005, I couldn't have walked 6.2 miles in a row - I wouldn't walk across the room if I could help it.  Six years later, I am running 6.2 miles regularly.  But I'm  not a good runner.  I'm not fast, I have horrible form, and I am still overweight, which doesn't help the impact running has on my joints.  But I am better than I was six years ago.   

Even though my Monday time was horrible, I still finished the entire race.  I didn't quit. I didn't give up.  In fact, I got home from the worst run ever and signed up to run a road race this Sunday.  Because I won't get better at running by quitting, I'll get better at running by running.  In another 9 years, check in with me and see how far I've come.  I bet I'll be pretty good at running by then. 

You can choose to let your failures deter you or you can use your failures as stepping stones on your path to success.  The choice is yours.  

Anchoring & Achievement

-by Jaime Willis

So, this is a story all about how my life got flipped-turned upside down...

(I'll wait while you finish rapping the theme song to Fresh Prince of Bel Air - you're welcome!)

Before I tell you my story, a short psychology lesson. Anchoring is a cognitive bias whereby a specific trigger event or object causes you to have a certain reaction. The most well-known example of anchoring is Pavlov's dog. You ring a bell, then feed the dog. After repeating the 'trigger' - ringing the bell - the dog reacts - begins to salivate - regardless if food is there or not.

Anchoring is also used as a behavioral therapy technique to help induce change or evoke a certain emotional response. Say, for example, you are sad but want to feel happier. Have you ever played a song that reminded you of a happy memory? Or looked at a photo that made you smile? That was anchoring.

Anchoring is really useful tool for achievement. When you are slogging through the day to day, let's face it, WORK, of achieving a goal, you may feel like you are never going to get there. But, if you can remind yourself of a time when you DID achieve a big goal, you can use that memory as an 'anchor' for your current goal.

As you know, I am working on a few pretty big fitness goals this year, the most public of which is my goal to run FIFTY 10k races in 2011. Wednesday, I ran my 13th 10k. Even though each 10k is an accomplishment in itself, it can sometimes be daunting to think that I have done all this work and I'm not even half-way to my goal. In fact, I'm barely 1/4th of the way there. This is the *prime* time for anchoring.

Last night, I needed to anchor myself, so I went back through some old photos to remind myself of how far I've come in the past six years. In 2005, I was enormous! I honestly cannot tell you how much I weighed because my scale at home didn't go past 330, but the arrow on the scale did when I stepped on. I had reached the end of the size line in even plus size clothing stores. My next clothing stop was literally going to be the aptly named Moo-Moo. I couldn't walk without wheezing, my legs and feet were constantly swollen, and I was miserable.

Left Image: 2005 Right Image: 2011

With my 30th birthday looming a year away, I made the decision to stop WISHING I would lose weight and to start MAKING IT HAPPEN. I chose to use gastric bypass surgery and behavioral group therapy as my primary tools to achieve my weight loss. Within 18 months of my surgery, I had lost 160+ pounds.

Left: Caribbean Cruise, 2004; Right: Santorini Greece, 2010

To be honest, I have struggled and continue to struggle to keep my weight off. By 2009, I had gained back about 60 pounds. Last year, after setting a goal of getting back to my 'fighting' weight, I re-lost around 40 pounds and I am not finished yet.

But when I start to get discouraged, or wonder if I will ever be able to put a check mark next to the "Reach my Goal Weight" goal, I anchor. I remind myself of how far I've come and how close I am to the finish line.

Six years ago, I couldn't properly tie my shoes because I had trouble reaching my shoelaces. I used the elevators for everything. I would avoid doing something that required me to run across the room to fetch something as 'too much work.' I would never have considered walking, let alone running 6.2 miles, and I promise you the only exercise I would consider doing 50 times in a row involved lifting a fork into my mouth.

Left: Me and My Brother, 2003; Right: Me and My Brother, 2008

Today, I am fit, healthy, and active. I can run into just about any clothing store and pick out something to wear. I can run. I do run. More than once a week even! Being morbidly obese was one of the hardest things I've ever experienced. If I have come this far, I know I can make it.

Anchor your way to success! See ya at the finish line!

Jaime's Big Goal

I, Jaime Willis, will run fifty 10-kilometer "races" by the end of 2011.

Like everyone else in this universe, I always, always have a goal about my body for New Years. Lose weight, gain muscle, eat healthier, etc. And, over the last several years, I've been pretty consistent about achieving those goals. It seems like its that last little bit of weight that is always the hardest to lose (or to keep off). Although good health is ultimately a lifestyle thing, having the same "weight" goal year after year is boring.

So this year, I'm switching things up a bit. I still want to lose a bit of weight, but I want to do it by challenging myself. So, in the style of Eddie Izzard's marathon extravaganza, but scaled down to minimize injury to my creaky hip and knee joints, I am going to be running 50 10Ks (6.2 miles) this year. That's one a week, with room for just a couple of whoops weeks.

My rules:

1) The entire distance has to be run at once. No adding all the walking around for the week.

2) Walking, jogging, running, and ellipticalling (totally a word!) all count as "running."

Starting when? Actually, starting last week! I've run two 10Ks so far, and have 48 to go. While most of my 10Ks are going to be gym races, I will be doing a few road races as well. Want to join me?

Sunday, May 15, 2011: Capitol Hill Classic, Washington DC.

Saturday, June 11, 2011: Lawyers Have Heart, Washington DC.

Saturday, June 25, 2011: Reeds Lake Run, East Grand Rapids, MI.

If you have a 10K road race you'd like to recommend I run, please email me.

One way to stay motivated to keep working on a goal like this one that is going to take ALL YEAR to finish is to create a reward chart for yourself, so you can see the progress as it happens.

Above is the chart I've made for my 10k project. Make your own chart on powerpoint, or buy one that fits your needs. Never underestimate the power of stickers to motivate you!

Great Motivation Chart/Tools:

• Life Calendar. Create a smiley face for each day of the year. You decide what you are going to do to earn a smiley face.
• Hand-drawn Chart. Maggie Mason colors in a square for every 15 minutes she exercises.
• "X" Chain. The productivity secret that Jerry Seinfield uses.
• Stickers and Charts. An entire website devoted to making goal charts for kids.
• Stickers! Oriental Trading has more cute stickers for your chart than you'll know what to do with.
• Joe's Goals. Keep track of multiple goals online or on your phone!

Keep plugging away at your big goal!