Today was Day 22 of my 30 day challenge in EA Sports Active.

First a recap. On Sunday, I pulled/tore something in my left calf during the “warm up” portion of the workout. Nothing terribly serious but I kind of limped/hobbled through the workout, then limped through the rest of the day. Happily yesterday was a rest day.

One of the few complaints I (and many others) have about Active is that the warmup and cooldown periods are so short as to be useless. The warmup when I hurt myself consisted of, Exercise 1: RUN! with the trainer urging me to pick up the pace, which I did, and suddenly it was like someone drove a knife into my calf (the pain eased a lot fairly quickly, but that first ouch was intense). Active needs both some stretching exercises built in, and a longer warm-up, at least. Maybe in the expansion coming this holiday.

So today, my calf was still tender but I finally did what I’ve *known* I should be doing all along. I stretched first. Angela helped me out there as she used to do martial arts and knows all kinds of stretches from doing them. And what a difference that made! I was so much more limber, and exercises like the side lunge with toe touches became pretty easy, and touching the floor with the tip of the remote was a cinch (without stretching I’d get about as far down as my ankle).

Luckily today was heavy on upper body stuff, so it was easy on the hurt calf. I still jogged very slowly on the final ‘cooldown’ run, just to be safe. So it wasn’t a particularly strenuous workout, but it felt really good, and I felt really good after it.

I’ve got a bit more than a week left in the challenge and I’m not sure what the program will point me towards when its done, but left to my own devices, I think I’ll re-do the 30 Day Challenge on “Light” difficulty, only using a Medium weight elastic band to increase the difficulty of the upper body stuff. I know there’s a fine line between being careful and slacking, but I am nearly 50 and horribly out of shape. I can not yet do the “Long” running sections at a “Perfect” pace (when I started I couldn’t even get up to a Perfect pace, now I can do about 1.5 laps at it…the program wants 2.5) and I figure a second time through Light will help me get up to speed on that. At the same time, the upper body exercises with the Active band have been so trivial that I don’t feel like I’ve made any progress with my arms/shoulders, so doing those all again with a store-bought medium band might get some development going on there.

Weight-wise I’ve been all over the place, according to the Wii Balance Board and Wii Fit. I was losing, then one day it said I’d gained 1.8 lbs, then the next day another .4 lbs, then the day after that it said I’d lost 1.5 lbs! Averaging it all out, I don’t think I’ve lost anything, but I haven’t changed my eating habits significantly, beyond snacking.

I’m not too upset about that, though. This first 30 Day Challenge is more about making a habit of working out. Getting myself and Angela used to the new schedule, getting used to having pleasantly sore legs and sort of being more aware of my body. If I lose weight, great. If not.. well I *know* I’m feeling more limber and my legs feel stronger, so the program is having a positive impact. The weight can come later after I’ve laid down the foundations of a healthier lifestyle.