Holiday Season Challenges

If you are like me, every year you go into the holiday season planning to get a jump start on new year's resolutions and not gain weight.  Two of our fellow bloggers are here to help!

Amanda over at Run To The Finish is hosting the Holiday Bootie Buster Challenge.  I participated in this last year and had a great time.  Amanda has established point values for different types of activity and eating habits. You track your points for the duration of the challenge and have the chance to win random prizes.  There are also opportunities to get bonus points by doing fun things.  New to the challenge this year is to select your activity level as either a Builder, Doer, or Advanced.  I was amazed last year to see how many points some people earned so I'm excited to have the levels this year since someone training at a much higher level is going to earn way more points than someone training to maintain fitness.  The HBBC runs November 19 - January 6 and you still have plenty of time to sign up. 

Mary at Fit this, girl! just announced her own challenge today.  Her challenge is called the Reverse Resolution Challenge.  Mary is a fun blogger to follow and I'm excited to try out her challenge this year.  For this one, Mary asks you to commit to two resolutions (or goals) and then select three measurable actions to accomplish during the challenge.  The challenge will run November 1 - January 1 and each week Mary will send out two emails to the participants with helpful tips and ideas for improving fitness.  You commit to report in via email to Mary each week on how you are doing against your goals and action items. 

I think these two challenges will work well together and hopefully provide me with that extra bit of motivation for the next two months.  My goals are to rediscover my fitness and build my long run back up to a 10 mile distance by January.  My second goal is to try to lose 10 lbs by January.  I have definitely let my fitness slip in the last month since completing my half ironman and losing a few extra pounds would be awesome!

If you want to join either challenge, visit the links above.  Both are offering some great prizes and even better the motivation and inspiration to tackle those January resolutions a little early!