Positively Unstoppable Challenge Update

So the six month positively unstoppable challenge has come to an end. You can read more about what the challenge is and why I signed up to it in my first post on this topic.

I set myself two challenges. The first was to run a half marathon. Admittedly I was confident I could achieve this goal because I’ve run many a half marathon and although it had been a four year absence, I knew the exact steps to take to get race fit. I completed this goal in April by running the Star Wars Virtual half-marathon, which you can read about here.

The second challenge I set myself was to be able to do the side splits. There are benefits to flexibility and the side splits just looks cool. This challenge was the harder of the two. I’ve never been able to do a side split. I failed to hit this goal, but I saw small progress none the less. I used the length of my yoga mat to measure progress. My yoga mat is 216cm long and with my left foot at one end, my right foot was 40cm away from the other end in January. By February my foot was 31cm away from the edge of the mat, so a quick improvement initially. By June, I was 27cm away from the edge of the mat, my progress has slowed considerably. The lesson I learned is that my plan was relatively sound, but the timescale I set was wrong, 6 months was enough for me. I’m resetting my expectations to 12 months and carrying on independently of the Unstoppable Challenge. The goal itself has become more important to me than the Unstoppable Challenge. Maybe thats the point of challenge, set a goal, pursue it for 6 months, and its borderline impossible to not see progress. Once you’ve seen that slow and steady progress you’ll likely carry on and see what the next 6 months bring.

The plan now is to keep my running fitness at a high enough level that it won’t be such a challenge to get race fit again, and to carry on with my side splits training and measure progress again after another 6 months.