My fitness level is getting a little ridiculous. And when I say that I don’t mean because it’s off the charts in a good way, I mean I haven’t gone this long without working out regularly in a long time. And believe me when I tell you I’m starting to feel it. It it weren’t for doing a recent Whole30 and being a lot better about what I’ve been eating I’d probably weigh ten more pounds and feel ten times worse.
You may remember I mentioned my severe lack of discipline a while back and sadly that post didn’t really do anything to up my motivation. Since writing that post in early November I ran exactly six times, and three of those were in the past week. (You do the math).
And so I decided last week to take a stand against my laziness and really commit to doing…anything, hence the completely generic title of the blog post. I spend a lot of time reading fitness and adventure blogs and then I whine to myself (or my poor husband) that I don’t do anything and I’m so out of shape and yadda yadda. And my husband’s favorite mantra to me is “don’t whine to me if you haven’t done anything about it”. I’m paraphrasing, of course – but you get the point. I can’t complain about being tired or weak or disappointed in myself when the most exercise I get is walking twenty feet to the mailbox every day.
On Monday I took advantage of the (albeit tiny) gym at work and hit the treadmill and was pleasantly surprised to find out that I can still run three miles without stopping – which I was actually worried about not being able to do. Granted it took me 32:03 (a far cry from the Run for the Art of It 5K I ran in September) 3 miles treadmill; 32:02
Tuesday was a planned off day – I had decided early in the week I was going to try to work out at work on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Wednesday I ended up taking the day off due to weather and totally failed on the workout front. I had plenty of time to do a strength DVD or some yoga or something at home…but I didn’t.
Which leads to Thursday, when I was determined that no matter how much I didn’t want to work out I was going to anyway. I went to the gym again and hit the treadmill, but this time I mixed it up and ran 1 mile at an easy pace with no incline, followed by 1.5 miles of hills (varying speeds and inclines), and finished with .5 miles at no incline. This helped take my mind off of running and burned a lot more calories than I would have if I’d just done a flat run like I normally do. The hills hurt, but in a good way. 3 miles treadmill, 35:33
I really did not want to work out on Friday. In addition to getting back into running I’d like to slowly incorporate some strength training into my routine, and so I browsed some of my favorite fitness blogs for a circuit workout I could do at my gym. I can across this routine from Jess at Blonde Ponytail. I started out with a 10 minute warm-up on the elliptical before grabbing a 15 pound kettlebell and finding a somewhat secluded corner of the gym. (Full disclosure: I would have used a 10 pound KB had I found one. Sadly, 15 was the lightest they had.) And this workout? Kicked. My. Butt. I didn’t do twenty minutes AMRAP. I probably barely did fifteen minutes including breaks – I’m not actually sure how long it was because my stupid ipod decided not to work at all. I ended up doing three rounds of the circuit before I actually started to worry that I’d have a heart attack or throw up. Or throw up and then have a heart attack. Just goes to show how long it’s been since I’ve done any strength training! I did, however, do three full circuits and I didn’t cheat or skip any movements no matter how much I wanted to. I wasn’t looking forward to how sore I would be on Saturday, although my nice long stretching session after the workout was pure heaven. 15 minutes elliptical, 10(?) minutes HIIT workout
On Saturday I had every intention of going for a run, or at the very least doing a yoga DVD to stretch out my aching body but sadly life got in the way. Unintentional rest day it was.
Sunday ended up a second much needed rest day. I woke up and went to church, spent the few hours between church and class alternating between homework and food prep and then rushed to class for three hours. Then I crashed hard. The end.
Weekly Workout Summary
Total miles: 6
Total minutes: 95 minutes (give or take)
Not as much as I originally intended, but not too bad compared to the last six months of pretty much nothing! Now let’s just see if I can keep this up for a second week…
Bear Family Strong 