Last night, I capped off my first year of Pelotonia with the successful completion of my walking distance goal. Of the five goals that I had set out to accomplish when I started this in late July, I only completed two of them (I came up short on the fundraising, but made progress on the weight loss and my preparations for my first 5K) While I am disappointed that I was not able to accomplish more due to some unforseen circumstances, I take heart knowing that I was able to accomplish what I did.

I managed to accomplish both of my distance goals while overcoming some obsticles, namely the health of my now 80 year old grandmother and my own health problems. I was also dealing with problems at my full time job (thankfully things have improved there) during the summer. In late October and early November, I had to deal with shuttling between home and my chiropractor in Dublin. I have to admit that my self-imposed social media exile did not help at all (Hope to be back on full time in early January)

I did learn a valuable lesson while I participated in this initiative, and that is learning to set realistic goals. When I started this, my initial goals were 250 miles for both walking and riding. As things progressed, it became clear that the walking goal was unrealistic, and it took me getting stomach problems in early October to finally realize this. I also realized that if I was going to be successful in something like this going forward, that I would need to break some of the bad habits that I had developed over the last few years (a topic for a future post).

Now that I have completed my first year of Pelotonia, I am looking forward to next year, and the potential to take part in my first group ride. Earlier this week, I got the announcement that next years event is scheduled for August 6-8, 2021. I will officially commit to next year when I get a few more details(I am targeting mid-March to start training next year.) In the meantime, I am taking some much needed down time to relax and get a few things done at home, and then I resume my quest to get healthy on Black Friday.

Finally, I would like to thank the team at Pelotonia for pulling this year’s event off given the current state of our world, and for giving me some encouragment on Twitter. I hope to see everyone next year.