Jaunty July Step Challenge

[Baltoscott]

The Jumping June step challenge is nearly over so it’s time to sign up for July.  Jaunty July?  Yeah, well, it is super hot in the Northern hemisphere, and super cold in the Southern hemisphere, so it is best just to have a little attitude about your steps and get at it.  🙂

   
How It Works:

The primary purpose of these monthly challenges is to keep track of your daily step goals for the month; though many of us track other things as well, like body weight exercises, sleep, trips to the gym, logging food, etc. This is not a competition to see who can do the most of whatever, instead it is a challenge to measure your consistency. So whether you do 1k, 5k, 10k or even 40k steps a day, this is measuring how many days out of the monthly total you can hit your goal.

Some might have a constant goal of 10k steps every single day and others might have a variable goal throughout the week, (and some might even plan days off!) for example.
Monday -> Friday = 10k steps a day
Sat & Sun = “6k steps a day,” or “not tracking”

Regardless of how you structure your daily goals, the only thing that matters for the monthly challenge is whether or not you reach what you set out to do.

Suggested Posting Format
1) Post either your constant or variable step goal.
2) Keep track of the # of daily goals achieved out of the monthly minimum and or monthly total

Although you certainly don’t have to post daily, you’ll likely stay closer to what you set out to do by updating the thread several times/week

Injury Notice
If you injure yourself during the month and need to scale back due to the injury, then all you have to do is adjust your goal for that period. If you normally do 10k steps a day but pull a hamstring and decide to do minimal walking (2k steps a day), then all you have to do is change your goal.

[Baltoscott]

July 10

5 Jaunty Walks	2/5
15K steps/day	10/31
1 pushup/day	10/31
14 weight-lifting days	4/14
50 floors or more for 20 days	10/20
Sleep 6+ hours 12 days or more during the month	4/12

Missed my sleep goal badly last night; under 4 hours. It is hard to get to sleep early on the first commute day of the week. Assuming I don’t sleep through my train stop and don’t fall off my bike on the way home, I’ll probably have more success hitting the hay tonight.  Very tired 💤 

[Baltoscott]

Welcome @PhyniceK.  May you have better success with you sleep goals than I do mine!

[Baltoscott]

@GershonSurge — since you’ve got a few fitbit miles under your belt already would it be cheating if you started your 100,000 miles challenge from when you got your fitbit instead of from last month?  We may all be under water by the 2040s or so and fitbits are notoriously bad at counting steps while swimming ... just trying to plan ahead ...

[WendyB]

@Baltoscott has a good point @GershonSurge i dont think it would be considered cheating.

New friends where i walk

[PhyniceK]

Lol! It’s looking pretty bleak so far!!! One night at a time!!! 

[GershonSurge]

@WendyB,

I like your new friends. Thanks for your vote on cheating.

@Baltoscott,

Fortunately, I've mastered the art of walking on water. Unfortunately, I can't walk on deep water yet. I'll keep working on it.

You know me. I'll change my tracking method hundreds of times before I'm 100. I call it the process of ongoing improvement. What's working best is tracking my chores, but it's becoming a chore as I'm doing them more quickly and burning fewer calories/minute doing them. Becoming more efficient was the reason I started tracking them, so it's working well.

As for your question, the simplest way would be to just watch my total miles on Fitbit. However, you might jump in and compete with me. That would be fine. You will never catch up with my age unless I "drop out." As for being ahead of me in total miles, I don't mind. I admire people who are better than me and try to learn from their example. 

My biggest concern is waking up one morning and finding out Fitbit went out of business. That's one reason I'm tracking separately.

Time for bed. 🙂

[A_Lurker]

---

@A_Lurker wrote:

I certainly didn't match my goals in June, but lets set them for July:

1) 11,000 steps each day

2) daily push ups (1 or more)

3) 7h sleep average each week

4) decluttering/cleaning/yardwork each day

5) checking in each day

---

1) 10/31

2) 10/31

3) week 1 (5h44m), current week (9h29m)

4) 10/31

5) 7/31

I'll write more tomorrow but I'm off to bed at the moment. 

[Baltoscott]

---

@GershonSurge wrote:

. ... 

My biggest concern is waking up one morning and finding out Fitbit went out of business. That's one reason I'm tracking separately.

 ...

---

Ditto that.  

One of my favorite things about the fitbit platform is that it keeps track of lifetime stats.  But even corporations that don’t go out of business change all the time and there have been many changes here since I got my first fitbit in 2011.  So I download my stats into monthly spreadsheets and save those files after copying some of the stats into an annual excel (now google sheets) workbook that I started in 1996 to record weight and bike mileage.  Each version of the annual workbook has a page for each month with detailed stats and an annual summary page that compiles the monthly totals and also adds some current year totals to running totals for all years since 1996.  At the end of the year I make a copy of the workbook renaming the copy as the new year, save and label a static version of the prior year summary page saving the old year stats, then zero out all monthly pages and then gradually fill them up again as new year passes.

[WendyB]

I have an Excel spreadsheet as well. Not nearly as fancy as @Baltoscott. But does keep track of all my stats since I started using Fitbit in January  2010 

[NellyG]

11 July

10,000 steps a day for 20 days                       10/20

Swim 2x per week                                              3/8

Dance 6 hours a week                                      2.5/6     9.5/24

One Coach workout or bike ride per week     3/4

4 Jaunty walks over the month                       2/4

Did another Jaunty walk today. I did big arm circles during the recover intervals of my walk. I enjoy thinking of something silly to do while I walk. 🤣

[SeleneD]

Hi everyone! Sorry I haven't been posting since awhile.

July 10th 

• 10,000 steps
• Dance

I haven't been tracking my steps through the FitBit app because it was draining me battery and data. But when that problem is fixed I will reinstall the app, for now I have to track my steps from the watch.

[WendyB]

July 11

Walk 8 minutes and increase when I can 8 minutes Done

Box daily 11/31

Weights 5/13

Lose 3 pounds 1/3 

[GershonSurge]

		100000	Mile	Challenge	by 6/5/53
Day	Date	Miles	Total Fitbit Miles	Total miles goal	avg	est. finish
40	7/10/2018	4.46	279.81	279.81	7.00	7/20/2057

This is an alternate method of presenting the data, which I started at the beginning of the 100,000 mile challenge. Read it from left to right like an abacus -- Two hundred seventy-nine miles. When I'm done, I'll only keep the left two columns. After 100,000 miles, I'll have a 35 year history of a hundred 500-mile "races," a hundred 1000-mile "races", ten 10,000 mile "races" and a 100,000 mile "race." All in an area about 22 inches high and 8 inches wide. 

Is it cheating to use past data? It's your data to do what you want with, but here is how I feel for my case. Some runners save all their old running shoes. I used to do that. I can't go to the thrift store and buy a bunch of shoes to represent the shoes I wore out in the past. Oh, I suppose some could, but it wouldn't be the same for me. I couldn't back in my previous miles and claim they were part of a 35-year challenge because they weren't. They were part of other challenges. Still, I could call it a 35-year history.

[WendyB]

@GershonSurge that does make sense

[Baltoscott]

July 11

5 Jaunty Walks	3/5
15K steps/day	11/31
1 pushup/day	11/31
12 weight-lifting days	6/12
50 floors or more for 20 days	11/20
Sleep 6+ hours 12 days or more during the month	4/12

Missed the sleep goal again, but at least I got over 5 hours.  Did some Jaunty Lunges between sets in the gym this morning, so giving myself credit for one more Jaunty Walk.  

Updated my weight lifting goal from 14 to 12 days.  I scheduled a rest week next week, and 3 instead of 4 the week after that.  Then back to my regular 4 day/wk routine.

[Baltoscott]

---

@SeleneD wrote:

Hi everyone! Sorry I haven't been posting since awhile.

July 10th 

• 10,000 steps
• Dance

I haven't been tracking my steps through the FitBit app because it was draining me battery and data. But when that problem is fixed I will reinstall the app, for now I have to track my steps from the watch.

---

@SeleneD my dog Jayhawk likes to catch things too.

[Jotex]

July 11

8,000 steps 12 days -- 5/12

15,000 steps 10 days -- 4/10

35 Jumping Jacks 22 days -- 8/22

Floor Exercises w/weights 12 days -- 5/12

Barely getting up to 8,000 steps today. Spent hours helping harvest a friends lavender. Then many hours bundling my portion up to dry! 

[A_Lurker]

@Jotex- love the lavender pics.  Mine didn't over winter very well (it's been in 3 years so I'm not sure why).  I may end up pulling it out and replacing it.  Not sure why it did so poorly over this last winter.

[WendyB]

@Jotex So pretty! Love the smell of lavender !

[A_Lurker]

---

@A_Lurker wrote:

I certainly didn't match my goals in June, but lets set them for July:

1) 11,000 steps each day

2) daily push ups (1 or more)

3) 7h sleep average each week

4) decluttering/cleaning/yardwork each day

5) checking in each day

---

1) 11/31

2) 11/31

3) week 1 (5h44m), current week (9h7m)

4) 11/31

5) 8/31

I don't think I've ever had such a sleep number so late in the week. It means I haven't been as productive as I have been, but I've been enjoying it. I'm actually past my 11k steps and it's just after 6pm. I'm also going out to mow some (or all) of the lawn shortly. It's quite warm but I've missing getting up early a number of days in a row. I'll at least do the front yard.

I went back for my third interview yesterday afternoon.  I believe it went quite well.  She's talking about sending me something tomorrow and checking my references, so I assume this is a good sign.  It's kind of funny with all this time off I'm hoping they aren't looking for a Monday start.  I have some things I want to do next week.