Oliver: If at first you don’t succeed, try again (on treadmill)

But you know what they say about good intentions. There’s a road paved with them, or something like that.

The thing is, if I say I’m going to do something, I believe that I ought to make it happen. Especially if I went ahead and committed it to print.

Goals can be tricky things, though.

Oftentimes, challenges arise. And as any coach will tell you, it’s what you do after the obstacle arises that counts.

For a while there, I let excuses win the day.

I don’t feel well, so I’ll get on the treadmill tomorrow. (A ready excuse when one is prone to chronic sinus infections.)

Ouch, I pulled a muscle in my back. Nope, I can’t do anything physical until it stops hurting.

What? I’m working late again. I won’t have the time to fit it in today.

And so it went … for weeks.

Then came a doctor visit in February, when I was told to cut back on my beloved coffee. OK, so she said I should stop drinking coffee altogether.

But, let’s face it, that’s never going to happen. I did cut back by at least seven cups a day. That’s got to be good for something, right?

Well, it wasn’t just coffee that had to go. It was a lot of other things, too.

Chocolate, mint, tomatoes, dairy, anything spicy. And the list goes on and on.

My life was over as I knew it, so why start exercising?

More weeks passed, mostly spent trying to figure out what on earth I was allowed to eat anymore.

Little by little, I got the hang of the new diet.

And, quite surprisingly (to me, at least), I started feeling better, sleeping better and breathing better.

Suddenly the treadmill started to seem like the next logical step rather than the first, almost insurmountable hurdle.

Of course, by now it was May, and I wasn’t getting any younger.

I can’t be the only person whose New Year’s resolution had fallen by the wayside. But I was determined that I wasn’t going to give it up.