Tag Archives: walking

Kicking my training up a notch…

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It’s not every day when someone shows up at your door with a box filled with stuff. With things piled on top of the box. I do so love days like that, especially when the stuff that the person shows up with happens to be stuff I can use.

In this case, it’s stuff I know I *want* to use, so we’ll see if I can kick my own behind into gear enough to be able to use it properly.

This all stems from one of those “it’s who you know” things, where I happen to know someone who works for a company that makes fitness equipment that’s designed specially for women. Now, I say this not to get all mushy – “ooh, it’s pink and it has wings!” NO NO NO. “Things designed for women” isn’t code for “looks like a tampon and smells like Febreze”. In this case, it’s fitness equipment that was designed for different body needs. Will dh use any of it? Uh, yeah. Why? It’s not because he wants to get in touch with his feminine side…it’s more that there will come a point when his curiosity will get the better of him. (He was already sniffing around the fitness mats and was excited that there was more than one.)

Of course, I haven’t yet had the chance to try this stuff out. My friend was kind enough to bring all this stuff last night, showing me everything from mats to medicine balls. As I try things out, I’ll post some reviews so that you can see what I found that worked for me. Bear in mind that my current schedule has me working out – at most – 3-4 times a week, with most of my workouts running maybe 35-45 minutes (and a longer one on the weekend). Some weeks I work out more, some less. I work out when I can, as we can fit it into our schedule (dh is training for his first triathlon). Add in full-time jobs and two kids and our schedule is almost military-level regimented from about 4:45am until the kids are finally asleep for the night.

Thanks to a fitness competition that was going on at work for the last few weeks, I’ve been focusing my workouts on walking, but now I can start to reincorporate core work. Hopefully, this will be less likely to kill me than what the sadistic incredibly sweet personal trainer at my gym had taught me earlier this year. (For such a nice guy, he certainly got an evil grin going when I was feeling near death halfway through his workouts. Yeesh.)

My eyes are on the prize(s): becoming fitter and finishing this year’s walking marathon without limping my way into the finish line. FINISH STRONG. As it happens, I connected with the Director of this year’s walk and there are a bunchload of people who live in my town that are also planning to do this year’s marathon; I suggested that she help organize a training club, and she’s going to see what can be done to make that happen.

So we’ll see if this works. I don’t consider this a reboot or even a .x release. This is just continuous flow. I haven’t stopped moving. (On the contrary, I was averaging well over 10,000 steps/day for the last three months.) I’d just like to kick things up a notch and, with a little help from my friends (and some new fitness toys!) I think I can do just that.

Who’s with me?

P.S. – If things work out nicely with any of the items I try out, there is a chance for giveaways. *claps hands in joy and grins madly* Keep your fingers cross, peeps.

I can see for miles and miles…

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I’ve always liked walking. It’s certainly better than running, in my opinion, since I’m not usually winded and feeling like my lungs will explode from a good walk – which even a 1/4mi run will do to me. Also, based on what my doctor has said about my knees, running is dead out. So, it’s walking for me.

And with the marathon slowly approaching, about 6 months out, I feel like I have sufficient time to ramp up so that I can cross that finish line not limping…justwalking. Naturally, this requires that I find ways to get my endurance up, such as training walks during the week on the treadmill at my office’s fitness center. Those are a bit tough lately, what with my calendar turning into a sea of red from meetings piled on top of meetings, but I’m trying to get back into a 3-day/wk fitness center schedule. Then we get to the weekends, and things invariably get odder.

So this is where I noticed that as I was leaving the Y this morning, after dd’s swim class, I was curious about the mileage from our house to the Y. Turns out that we’re 5-ish miles from the Y. Hmm. That means I could send dh with BOTH kids to the swim class next week (ds would sit in the stands and watch) and walk over to meet up with them. Of course, that throws off the usual Sunday schedule of one parent at swim class and the other at the grocery store, with kids split evenly between us, but sometimes you have to make such sacrifices.

The loop I did last weekend turned out to be 4 miles (which was why it was such a breeze), so I’m looking to push the distance, even early in the training cycle. I could stay off the main roads and just stick to a loop around secondary & tertiary streets, but then it’s a matter of which ones have sidewalks and making sure I’m appropriately brightly colored for the ones that don’t.

What I would like to get my hands on is an iPhone app that helps you track how far you’ve walked in distance (not steps), so that I don’t have to rely on Google Maps to give me mileage. Don’t get me wrong – Google maps does fine, especially now that they have the walking directions feature – but it would be nice to have something I can just use to measure these right from my phone. I’m sure there’s one out there, but I haven’t seen one that really fits my bill just yet (so suggestions are more than welcome!).

It’s hard to figure out how to fit it all in. When your schedule during any given week is like playing a game of Jenga, it seems monumentally difficult to wedge in exercise/training time. I know that you have to prioritize it and all, but there are a lot of competing priorities in my life (kids, work, etc.) and sometimes it feels like the true marathon is just trying to go the distance on that without completely dorking everything up.

I’ll figure it out. I really want to walk across that finish line this year, finishing stronger than I did last year. That 26.2 sticker felt SO GOOD going on my car. I guess I just need to figure out how to juggle “marathons” and finish strong across the board. Sounds easier than it is, I’m sure, bu probably worth doing nonetheless.

So, I was THAT person at the gym…

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NO, not the tool who uses a machine and who fails to wipe it down. (ew)

NO, not the person who sings along with their iPod. (ew)

NO, not the person who lifts 250lbs and grunts like one of those guys from the World’s Strongest Man Competition. (*rolls eyes*)

I was (le sigh) the one who ended up throwing up – and I’m here to say it’s okay. Now, part of why it’s so okay is the fact that it wasn’t entirely due to my personal trainer’s efforts to get me a training routine that will come to the brink of just about to kill me; a lot of it was due to female troubles (*cough*) that have had me nauseous for days. Guys have no idea what manner of shit women have to put up with and they could never tolerate it for even six months in a row, much less decades.

Moving right along…

So, I consulted with the trainers at my office’s fitness center (where I work out) to see if I could get some personal training to help me better prepare for the marathon in September. I don’t have a ton of cash, but I did get some money for my birthday that I could use for this, and work will reimburse me for all but $5 of the 3-sessions’ worth of training that I signed up for. My plan is to use this training to help me get my legs in better shape so that my hips and knees won’t feel like they’re unhinging halfway through the marathon this year. Last year, I finished the marathon. This year, I want to finish strong(er).

My trainer set me up with three half-hour sessions, and my first session involved some partial squats (first without and then with 10lb free weights in each hand), some balance ball work and some “monster walks” (moving side to side with rubber bands around my legs). He has three more exercises to teach me, but things were cut short yesterday when I wasn’t able to think straight and needed to rest. The conversation:

Trainer (worried): Are you seeing stars?

Me: No – not yet. (ha ha)

Trainer: OK, well, that’s good. Do you feel like you need to throw up?

Me: Uh…I don’t think so.

Trainer (slight smile on his face): That means that you’re probably pretty close.

Now, I’ve heard of people who throw up from those boot camps, and I feel massive amounts of sympathy for them, because I can’t imagine going into a boot camp program and having my ass kicked in front of many people. Even here, this is in front of work people, but traffic when I go is low enough that it’s typically not a panic-inducer for me. And, thankfully, I had the presence of mind to walk (slowly) to the ladies locker room AND get to a bathroom stall before I threw up, so I consider it kind of a win.

I still need to go back another time to get the remaining 3 exercises down, so I can start the routine of alternating my walking with this. That will be either today or tomorrow. My quads are still somewhat sore at times, making me question just how strong I thought they were; it seems improbable that they were as solid as I thought for how much they were burning last night!

So, semi-humiliation of puking aside, and pain aside, I feel like I’m on the right path. Of course, these exercises have the potential to help me strengthen my legs (good for me and the marathon) and lose some weight (again, good for me and the marathon), so I’m actually looking forward to doing them. I think it’s 100x easier for me to take this on since I have a specific goal and it’s not something that I know I can’t do. I just have to get past having been that person.

And now I have.