July 2018 - Complete the Circles : Intro and Days 1-3

Having read up about a bunch of different 30 day challenges, I thought I'd take one on. The first one is relatively simple, and one that I'm pretty confident I can hit. These blogs are going to document how they go, what benefits and difficulties I got from them, and at the end, a summary of whether I'd do them again, incorporate them into my lifestyle, or whether I even completed them!

I'm going to be a bit forgiving on myself, in that if I miss a day's challenge, I'll carry on with it and give the challenge a score out of 30.

The challenges will be a combination of physical and mental, kind of like a protracted Crystal Maze...

I've got a full time job, family commitments and whilst I wouldn't describe my social life as ravin' mental, there's always lots of fun stuff in the diary. The challenges will have to fit round those...

So; to July's 30 day challenge : 

Complete the Activity Rings on my Apple Watch.

Now this should be doable. I've come close on a number of occasions before, the challenge will mostly be those days when I'm tired, haven't managed to do much on the watch because of other commitments.

My "Active Calories" is set at 790. Not sure why, that's what the algorithms have found for me, and I'm happy with that as an achievable, but also challenging. This is the one that's going to cause the challenge - the other metrics of "Minutes Exercising" is set at 30, which accumulates walking, housework, running after kids, playing football with Jack etc. Not often a problem. The final one "Standing" simply requires that you stand once in an hour, and is looking for 12 hours. I think I've missed this one once or twice ever, given that even with my sedentary office job, I'll get up and make a coffee / go to the toilet about once an hour anyway. I think you'd have to be a real couch potato to not hit this one.

Day 1 : This was a Sunday - traditionally easier on account of time with the kids. I played football with Jack, skateboarded to church, and we went out geocaching in the evening. As a result, all 3 circles closed quite nicely by about 6pm.

Day 2: This was a bit of a challenge. Having been out for a walk at lunchtime, taken my bike to Alex's for a tune up, I was left with 200 calories to go at 11pm. I was tired from the night before, having got back from a mates place at 1am, but didn't want to fail the challenge so early on. I also didn't want to get on the mag-trainer, as I wanted to ride the following day, so I did weights instead. This just about did the trick. Not sure how the Active Calories is calculated, I suspect it's by heart rate, which I've found to be harder to get going when doing weights vs doing a bike / running / cardio, but managed to get the job done.

Day 3 : Cycled 15 miles to work - exercise and Active Calories all nicely closed by 8am. Just had to make sure I stood up consistently between then and the end of the day. Piece of cake.