Keeping It Honest

By Princess Alana

Thank you, virtual world, for keeping me an honest woman! This blog was first created more as a virtual scrapbook of our journey to the Castle. Since attaining that goal, we have met so many amazing woman, who unbeknownst to us, were inspired and had the courage to begin their own journey because of our magical blog. For my own selfish reasons, updating the success of my training virtually has improved my consistency and commitment to my running goals.So, I thought I would share my list to maintain consistency:

1) Schedule It:

After teaching pre-teens and teenagers for 13 years, not much changes with regards to time management skills. In my learning skills course, I stress to my students the importance of managing limited time by using a scheduler. Funny enough, I listen to my own advise by immediately scheduling my runs a month at a time. Some may say, how can you forward plan for a month. Simple. I try my best to not double book events for 2 hours a week. By scheduling my runs, I am making them a priority and I am more apt to be successful. And, important to note, my children or family suffer not.

2) Tell Someone:

One sure fire way to stay committed to a running schedule is to tell someone. As soon as you speak those magic words out loud,”I am running tomorrow”, it is harder to break that commitment. What is even more encouraging is to form a BRF group.

3) Flock Together:

A great benefit to running with a group is that even if something happens and one member cannot attend, you will still have a running partner. Since Jodi, Laural and I live so far from one another, I am so very fortunate to have a great group of women who pound the pavement twice a week right after school. For the past two weeks, I haven’t run with the same person twice!

4) Have a Plan:

I wanted to update everyone on my latest running plan based on Coach Jenny Hadfield’s latest article in Runner’s World. Jenny’s method focuses on running and walking by your body. (Alternate running until you hear your breath and walking until you catch your breath for a total of 20 minutes.) My group tried this method and we were deeply unsatisfied. Now this might be because we are math teachers and are strongly compelled to set the Garmin to specific walk/run intervals, or maybe we are in better shape then we thought. Whatever the reason, I am back to my true Prince Jeff Galloway’s method. I will never forget his sincerity when we met at the Disney Princess Expo in 2013!