I aged 70 years overnight. Awesome.

Yesterday, it was life at 25. Today it feels like life at 95! I can barely sit down in a chair without cringing or moaning and every step feels like pins poking in my butt and thighs. My returning motivation has landed me in some returning pain. I knew going into my workout yesterday morning that I would be sore for a couple days, (that's what I get for avoiding squats and lunges for months) but I didn't anticipate my back to be in so much pain that I can barely bend over to tie my shoe. For the last year or two I've been having troubles with my lower back. I can't tell if it's a muscle thing or a bone thing or dare I say an organ thing. But it seems that intense exercise or heavy lifting tends to irritate it the most. I've put off going to the doctor for two reasons: 1. I'm hoping one day I'll just wake up and it won't hurt anymore and 2. I can't really afford a doctor visit these days, and that's just for one visit, I sure as hell wouldn't be able to afford a treatment or therapy if something was really wrong with it. So that leaves me with bearing through the pain and hope it's nothing serious.

Despite being super sore today I still got up before sunrise (even on my day off) to go for a run to hopefully help loosen the muscles that had tightened up overnight. I can get bored with the same view on my runs/walks so I decided to try a new path that I had my eye on since last summer. Although I didn't keep a pedometer with me, I estimated (by counting the number of songs playing on my Ipod) that I had ran about 3 miles and walked about 2. Not bad for waking up and barely being able to move! That's two days in a row of exercise before sunrise and hoping to keep it up as long as I can. This weekend will definitely be a challenge, it always is.

So I've got the exercise getting into gear, now I'm just waiting on the healthier food to kick in. This week's paycheck goes straight to rent but next week's is going straight to groceries! I'm psyched! I've been finding new recipes to try and have made a new agreement with myself: One day of the week will be dedicated to meatless meals and another day will be dedicated to a new, healthy recipe with an ingredient that I had never eaten/used before, i.e. tofu. Seems like a great challenge, eh?!

I am really trying to hard to end this with a catchy, memorable quote or saying to wrap up this challenge-themed post but I guess this is one challenge that I will end in failure. Epic failure.