She Runs by the Seashore

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Thank you, Melissa Wilson.

Some may have been angry or disappointed about being nominated to do 22 push-ups for 22 days, but I am actually really glad my friend Melissa nominated me for this challenge.

If someone had told me I was going to be doing 484 push-ups, I would have been surprised. (I just calculated the total.) For my exercise, I mostly just enjoy running, with the occasional — I’m trying to make it more regular — abs workout.

I posted a video of myself on Facebook doing 22 push-ups for 22 days in a row, aside from one day when I somehow forgot. I did do the challenge for 22 days, which just meant the challenge was spread out over 23 days for me.

The support I got from my Facebook friends was great. People were very supportive, and some even brought up the challenge outside of Facebook.

I hope I raised some awareness for the cause — PTSD Awareness and the estimated 22 veterans who take their own lives each day. I used the hashtags #22pushups, #22days, #PTSDAwareness and after I saw it, I began using the hashtag #22kill. Learn more about the effort here. 

When the ice-bucket challenge was popular, I did a video (for me it was just the cold water challenge, as I didn’t have much ice) and made a small donation to the ALS Association. I recently saw that the huge amount of people doing this challenge actually made a difference. (Read more on the ALS Association website.)

I have seen some other friends doing the push-up challenge, although not nearly as many as I saw who did the ice-bucket challenge. But wouldn’t it be amazing if somehow we were able to decrease the number of suicides?

Although I did note in my previous post that the number is somewhat disputed, I believe this is a serious problem, and if the number could be decreased, that would be amazing. Because it isn’t just numbers — these are people. If a veteran suffering from PTSD decides to get help because of this social media effort (I’m not referring to mine in particular, but just in general), that would be a step in the right direction. A person getting help that he or she needs for a health problem shouldn’t be something to be ashamed of.

The first couple days I tried to do regular push-ups, but I didn’t have very good form and my boyfriend Mike helped me get my form down a little bit better and for the rest of the challenge, I did modified push-ups. (Read my post from earlier in the challenge here.) I definitely saw improvement in myself and I feel that it started to make me stronger and use some muscles that hadn’t been getting much use. There were plenty of days when I just felt sore in general.

I was going to upload my first video and my last video to show my progress — I think my push-ups got a lot better — but unfortunately I cannot upload videos on my current WordPress plan. I’ll plan to add them to my Facebook page here: She Runs by the Seashore.

I’m not going to continue posting videos — I’ve probably bombarded enough people’s timelines, although I did get positive comments. But I would like to continue these push-ups, and although I can’t promise to do it every day, it really only takes about a minute or so and I’m planning to keep it up.

Like She Runs by the Seashore on Facebook here.