 Hello there, my beautiful, lovely, talented, and delightful internet friends. This chair is very spinning. All right. Let's get back to center. Welcome back to my channel. Thank you so much for joining me here today on Footless Show, where I am still Joe. I am still missing a foot. I have checked, lost, and found. No one has returned it yet, so I'll keep you updated if anyone brings that back. And my dear friends today is a pretty fantastic day, as we are going to be registering for something that I have talked about for like two years now. If you are new to this channel, and this is the first video that you've watched, first of all, welcome. It's lovely to see you here. Secondly, a quick backstory on me. I am a below-the-knee amputee. I lost my leg about two and a half years ago due to years of pain and suffering from a horseback riding accident when I was 13, that eventually cost me my ankle. Now, since then, life has gotten significantly better. I've been able to start moving again and going for walks and hiking and trying new things, and it's been incredible. And one of the things on my bucket list has always been to run or walk a 5K. As fate would have it, when I pulled up YouTube a couple days ago, I saw a community post from Squirming and Grubs. You may know them. They are an absolutely fantastic couple and an amazing channel, and they announced that they are holding their annual virtual 5K. And frankly, I cannot think of better people and a better organization to support than their organization laughing at my nightmare, which, unrelated side note, is a fantastic name. So before we register and get started training today for this 5K, there are a couple things you should know. Number one, I have never completed a 5K in my life. My ankle always stopped me. There were two that I attempted to do. I think I got about a quarter mile on the first one, like half a mile on the second one. I was like, okay, this is not for me. Number two, will I be walking or running? I'll be honest, I'm not sure yet. I have four months? Five months? Seven months? No, six. Math is hard. I have six months. I have six months to train and work up to this, so I guarantee you I will be walking it, come hell or high water, but I'm really hopeful that I might be able to run it. I gave an update in an Instagram post the other day, but you guys know that I got my running blade a few months ago, which was a dream come true, which was absolutely amazing. But it's been a really slow process getting up and going on it because my knee's been giving me a lot of trouble and I'm waiting to get into physical therapy. So my hope, fingers crossed, is that I'll be able to get into physical therapy, strengthen myself enough that I'm able to run these three-point-something miles. How long is a 5K in miles? Because Americans like to do things differently. 3.1 miles. Okay, so a 5K is 3.1 miles. I am 100% certain I'm going to be able to walk that. Maybe not today, but I know I can work up to it and I'm really hoping to be able to run it. I also want to note, as I begin my sign-up process, that I would love it if you would join me in this virtual 5K. So I've never done a virtual 5K before, but because it's COVID season and we're trying to stay socially distanced and also this is a great way to connect people all over the world and the country. A virtual 5K is one that you do on your own. You can walk it, you can run it, you can roll it, you can hop on a horse and go over it. Maybe, I don't know, that might be cheating because then the horse does all the work. But I happen to know that Shane and Hannah's goal for this virtual 5K is to have 500 participants this year. They are at 194, which is a pretty awesome start. So if you feel like joining and supporting a pretty fantastic cause, please join me and register for this 5K. I'm going to link it down below. Let's do the run-bag with the shirt because I know it happens to come with a medal in it. Now you may be wondering, understandably so, what is this fantastic cause that we are going to be supporting? Laughing at My Nightmare has two goals. They provide tools and presentations to schools across the country to help increase empathy and understanding and the ability to overcome adversity no matter what someone might be facing. And the second goal that they have is to provide cost-free medical equipment to people who are dealing with muscular dystrophy. I personally don't deal with MS, however, I know from being someone who has faced medical issues how expensive things get. So I absolutely adore the fact that they are working to provide free adaptive and medical equipment to people in need. Okay, let's get registered. At which point I'm going to cut so that all my personal information is not leaked to the world. And we are registered. I am finally doing a 5K. Okay, so the biggest question on my mind right now is how far can I currently walk? So let's head over to a local park to begin my 5K training. But first, a quick word from our video sponsor. Today, I am thrilled and honored to introduce you to today's video sponsor, Ana Luisa Jewelry. You have heard me talk about this company before. I love working with them not just because their pieces are absolutely lovely, but also because they have a sustainable mission in our carbon-neutral jewelry company. Ana Luisa Jewelry pieces make amazing gifts for yourself or loved ones, especially as we head into this Valentine's Day season. Right now, if you head over to their website, which is linked in my description down below, you can get 15% off any piece, which is a fantastic deal. There are a lot of things that I love about Ana Luisa Jewelry, the least of which is definitely not the fact that their pieces are just lovely, beautiful matches. So many different styles are great for spicing up your looks, staying at home if you're just, you know, chilling in your PJs and working at a computer desk as I do most days, or if you have some kind of event or outing to go to. But I also love the fact that they have a 365 day warranty on all of their products to refund or replace anything that does not match your expectations. And by far, one of the best things is the fact that their pieces started at $39, there's no luxury markup that's gonna completely drain your pocketbook. Do people even say pocketbook anymore? Your wallet, your bank account? And in any case, they are affordable, they are beautiful, and they would be a fantastic gift for yourself or someone else as we head into Valentine's Day. So like I said, 15% off any piece, if you click the link in the description down below, not only does it help support this channel, but this is a company that I really, really love working with. Whenever I get the notification to work on a campaign with them, I get so excited because I love wearing their jewelry, you will see it in so many of the past videos that I filmed. So please go check them out and let me know what you think. So I feel like step one to training for anything is establishing a baseline of where you're starting. So I'm gonna go for a walk and see how long I can comfortably walk on my leg with no issues. I'm guessing I can get pretty darn close to a 5K distance, but I've never actually tracked it. Let's walk. At about half a mile, my leg has had better days. I'm wearing pants today. So I can't add any leg sock layers, which was probably a mistake, but it's kind of cold. So, you know, one to be cozy. Okay, so I've walked just about 1.1 miles in about 23 minutes. I should probably set a goal for like what I wanna get down to for the full 5K, but maybe if I could get down to like 15, 12 minutes a mile, that'd be good. Completely unrelated side note. I've realized I have the taste in books, probably equivalent to a 50 year old man. I've really liked Greg Hurwitz's books like Orphan X, and I've been listening to the Lincoln Lawyer series again. And the only people who ever know what I'm talking about are not people of my own age. So I'm not sure what happened. Maybe it's because my dad liked Tom Clancy novels and it just became ingrained in me. I'm curious, when you are ambling about for a walk, do you prefer listening to music or audio books? I feel like people are pretty split on this. I am definitely an audio book person. For walks, if I'm like trying to do anything, especially athletic, always music, but it's just nice to walk and have someone read to you. I have located some rocks up ahead where I will definitely be stopping and resting and letting my leg take a break for a second. And rest. All right, let's do this. I got about a half mile left to the car and to maybe icing my leg when I get back. It's good to know a starting point. I would have liked to go maybe further than I think I'm gonna be able to do today, but it's good to know where I'm starting so I know where I can get to. We made it to the parking lot, folks, and we are done. Success! All right, so I did just over two miles in 45 minutes. I feel like a decent goal if I was walking the 5K would be the 5K in 45 minutes. That is what we're gonna work towards for the time being. I do wish I could have gone a little bit further today, but I needed to listen to my body, needed to turn back when I did, and now I need to go ice my little leg and take care of it, but I'm so excited to finally registered for my first 5K. All right, time to go home. Welcome back to my abode. So we didn't quite reach the 3.1 mile marker to make a whole 5K today, but frankly, I've got six months to train. I am not concerned about that, and I really hope I'll be able to run at least part of it. And now that we have a goal to work on, the real work begins. I am so excited to take you guys along on this journey to be able to walk, run, crawl. We'll see what happens. My first 5K in July, I would highly recommend you check out Laughing at My Nightmare, linked down below and register for their 5K if you feel like it. Maybe gather a group of friends and do this together. It could be a fun outdoor activity this summer. A big thank you again to Ana Luisa Jewelry for sponsoring today's video. Remember, you can get a whole 15% off any item if you click the link in the description down below. Additionally, a gigantic thank you goes out to all of my patrons over on Patreon for sponsoring my channel, for supporting my videos. And what I'm doing here, it means the world to me to you. Watching this video right now, thank you so much for taking a few minutes out of your day to hang out with me here today and help me register and start training for my very first 5K. You could be anywhere in the world doing anything else. And you chose to hang out with me for a few minutes and that means the world to me. I love you guys, I'm thinking about you and I will see you in the next video. Bye guys.