How I Stay Motivated by Goal Tracking on Google Drive

For one year now I have had a goal of including lower body for doing my cardio. Truth is, I was unable to put my right heel on the ground due to my foot being distorted because of spasticity further up the leg due to my MS.

For me, I have always been competitive with myself to see if I could go one step further than I did yesterday. Even it was No brace or cushioning or bandages, and believe me I’ve tried it all, was going to fix it. So I decided to have corrective surgery, which my ankle specialist told me was a partial split tendon transfer and Achilles tendon release,and After intense physical therapy and a lot of corrective training, here I am one year later a new and improved person. Each day is slightly better than the last, and I need to track it to make sure I’m not imagining it.

I use Google sheets to track my monthly goal challenge of reaching 100 miles on my arms and legs. Before my corrective ankle and foot surgery back in August one year ago, I had no choice but to use most of my crank power on my arms using an upper body ergometer or “hand bike”.

I’ve been using a 75 mile challenge worksheet for a couple of years now since I was in a group training class and the instructor offered a 75 mile challenge. Because all I could do was upper body the only choice for me was to do the handbike. I built a lot of shoulders and traps and upper body strength on this machine but never really any bone mass from weight-bearing activity that I especially need for my osteoporosis, I found out about after a fall. My neurologist decided to send me for a DEXA scan to see my bone density, Way off target now, sorry about that. A lot of background on my story.

So this group fitness instructor gave us a challenge to reach 75 miles in addition to our group training send anything else we did. I thought it was a ludicrous idea for someone with MS and mobility challenges walking with two crutches, to be able to tackle a goal like this. But as I charted it out month by month and slowly begin to see my gains in mileage because I was building the endurance to do it, I began to start refining my form and what time of day, it was a challenge that I kept on over the last couple of years.

Since then, I have changed this monthly goal to 100 miles. It happened after I reached almost 100 miles the past couple of months. I would never have thought in 1 million years I could. But this only happened after I was able to include my legs in the mix because I was able to stand on my own 2 feet now after my life-changing surgery.

When I added my lower body, that meant I had now a variety of machines to choose from including elliptical, a NordicTrack, steps, recumbent bike, stationary bike, treadmill, and I would have to try all of them to see what was best for me, it worked out to be the elliptical trainer,

If you want to know anything more in depth on what I talk about because I’m not explaining it right at 4:30 in the morning in the dark in my driveway, please comment on this blog post. I’m going to publish this right away so that I forced myself to come and edit it later for any stupid grammatical errors I may make.

So I made this goal of now including leg achines in the mix and I wanted to split the challenge so that I could see what percentage of my upper body was reaching that 100 miles and what percent was reaching my lower goal on what goal I would have every month. It was important for me to make a game of it and make it fun I want to be accountable and that’s why I use Google Drive,

I’m able to just open it up easily and put my miles in there and the template has a formula that I put in to automatically calculate what percentage that entry was. Last month I did not reach my 100 mile goal of 100, but over 91 was not too shabby at all considering I went on vacation for three days. I did hit a gym on vacation and got a couple of miles in, but it just was not enough. I am not sad by not reaching my goal, I think 91 point something is pretty awesome. I will try again this month. As a matter of fact that’s where I’m headed right now. It’s 4:42 AM, the gym opens at 5 AM. I will post this and I will see you later! Remember I meant that, if you have any questions or want to know about anything else in my hacks for how I stay strong and stay motivated, empowerment if you will, give me a shout!