Thursday, December 31, 2009

Love the one you're with

Well, when it comes to workout machines, I'm TRYING ;p I have to admit that when I went downstairs this afternoon, both elliptical machines were occupado so I decided to walk on the treadmill until one was open. That walk got me itching to jog and I totally started upping the speed when a machine opened up. Coincidence or sign?? HMM??

This morning I was catching up on blogs (still WAY behind) and noticed Kelly's Elliptical Challenge 2010. Perfect timing! I signed my broken self up and am psyched for this extra bit of motivation! Here's the quick rundown:
  • Challenge runs December 27, 2009 to January 30, 2010.
  • Each participant sets a personal goal - mine is to do at least 3 workouts (at least 40 minutes each) a week.
  • Goals are logged in a shared spreadsheet and if you meet your weekly goals, you'll be entered to win a $10 iTunes gift card.
This afternoon's workout brings me to 80 minutes of elliptical fun. Yowza. I got a little sweatier this time around since I tweaked Tuesday's workout a bit. This time, instead of focusing on how much I dread the machine, I decided to focus on ways I could make it work for me/ways to keep me distracted haha.

I went with a higher crossramp level (10) and lower resistance level (1) for my warm up, recovery and cool down. For the tougher parts, I brought the crossramp level down to 6 and upped the resistance to 7. I'm sure those are really dinky numbers to the advanced elliptical lover, but hey, I'm trying!

Numbers ALWAYS distract me. Sometimes during a really tough long run, I'll find myself trying to do math in my head (usually calculating how far we have left or how much we've already run). It's not easy, but the minutes and miles FLY BY. Anyway, I nerded out and decided to pay attention to my strides per minute.
During the tough parts, I made sure I stayed between 185 and 195...sometimes jumping up to 200 if a good song was on. Recovery strides were between 165 and 175.

All I have to say is that nerding out made the time go by super fast. I think the hardest part was the 10 minute cool down! haha. Closed my workout out with some calf stretching and instead of toe taps, I did this other exercise recommended by my PT that has me doing laps in my living room. Basically I squat and walk on my toes. Quite a sight.

Sorry for the lack of pictures! I'm off to prep some appetizers for a NYE party I'm headed to this evening in Arlington. Definitely remembering my camera!! Hope everyone has a fantastic New Year's! Mine's going wonderfully so far...especially after getting a mid-morning call from the birthday boy Okinawa! Yaay :)

1 comment:

Kelly said...

Yay, I'm glad you are learning to love the elliptical and participating in my challenge! I am hoping to love it by the end of the month, we shall see haha