Talk about your exercise experience today

[SometimesSweet]

The past few days (since Thursday) I have had company so my exercise routine has been thrown right off.. I hate it when that happens. I am so happy to have my family/friends come to visit but I spend so much time taking care of them I tend to put my things aside.
I barely had time to write in my journal each morning and enjoy my morning coffee. Can anyone else relate?

Back to the gym tomorrow, yeah!!!

SS

[Kelt]

The last couple of days of been alright.

Yesterday when I got up my ankle protested in a new place. I walked around the house a little bit and it seemed pretty good so I went down to the beach. I took it easy, but it didn't feel quite right so I took the exit at 2 miles. Still a nice walk.

In the afternoon I went to the pool to practice by myself. I brought my new goggles to try out. I'm up to doing kind of an assisted dog paddle type thing with the barbell looking device as quasi water-wings.

Goggles are great! Especially after you get around to figuring out that you can actually open your eyes when you're wearing them. So I did my paddling around with my face in the water, and after a while, with my eyes open. I did really well with the breathing and humming, even turning my head to the side instead of straight up to breath in.

At about the 90 minute mark I was good and tuckered, and decided it was time to get out. On that last little stretch, I guess I was tired, I did the breathing backwards. * choke sputter cough sputter cough*

On that note, I decided it was time to get out. Then I changed my mind. Something in the back of my head told me that if I quit right then I might not go back. I decided to play psychologist with myself, and not leave on a bad note. So I jumped back in for two more paddle-laps and then left under my own control. I'm glad I did, the books tell me that a key to learning to swim and not be afraid is to learn how to feel like I am in control. Sounds good to me.

Today was less ambitious.

I got up to a very twitchy ankle but still wanted to get outside. I taped everything up and went down to the beach just for a little bit. I didn't go far, maybe a mile. But I did run in to a couple of the regulars, made plans for lunch with one for later in the week, and just enjoyed the fresh air.

Intentional day off from swimming today, planning on going for another practice day on my own tomorrow.

*******

The Group Power workout looks really hard! I am impressed.

I also loves me some good shoe deals too

[DapperButch]

Originally Posted by nycfem

40 minutes Arc Trainer, Interval Level 5, television sucked because of that damn "Royal Baby"

20 minutes weights and yoga

LOL That made me laugh the hell out loud! Dakarti is gonna coming in here and kick your butt!

I have been a slacker. I was really kicking ass last week and then this weekend got all messed up b/c of trying to fit in going to the beach, plus watching the last two stages of the Tour de France.

I got up Saturday morning in time to watch the 4 hours of the Tour. Headed to the beach and got there about 3:00pm. TF and I went to eat and I had a couple of beers. I certainly going to work out after I got home that evening.

I guess I could have worked out when we woke up on Sunday, but I was too focused on us finding a spot (bar/restaurant) to watch the last stage of theTour (which started at noon). So, we go to a bar/restaurant. I can 't tolerate the lack of sound, so we head home, thus losing 1.5 hours of Tour time. Anyway, I saw the last half and then of course had to watch the repeat so that I saw what I missed. Late by then. So, that wiped out Sunday. Guess I should have just stayed home! But, I really wanted to get away, even if for only half a Saturday and half a Sunday.

So today I DID NOTHING AND HAVE NO EXCUSE. Ever feel like you simply don't give a shit and can't really remember why you set out on this stupid exercise venture to begin with? Yep. That was me today.

Tomorrow I have a thing after work I have to go to and won't be able to work out. I should be able to the rest of the week, even though it won't be right after work the way I like it to be.

<--- always feels better after confessing his sins.

[Chancie]

I weeded for an hour or two last night, and for about 45 minutes this morning.

I really need a day off after Group Power. I am amazed that I can do almost everything but my muscles are sore after class.

I want to participate in a squats challenge. I do enough in class and I'll have to do 100 squats every day that I'm not in class.

[Mopsie]

Today is a recovery day for me. And maybe tomorrow also...

Yesterday at work, I was walking down a flight of stairs when my foot caught on a loose board. I put the "flight" into flight of stairs.

I managed to land on my arms and knees before face planting, but today I look like a victim of domestic violence. And I'm sore all over! *sigh*

I have never been graceful but yesterday I took klutziness to a new high ... or should I say low. Sheesh.

You think those safety cord things work off the treadmill??

[sierragirrl]

off to walk the track at the high school to get myself geared up for the long ass walk that kicked my butt last week..
I tackle Bidwell Park again tomorrow night <help>
told my doc what I did she said you are supposed to start out slow and build yourself up.. She clearly does not know me well, I always jump in with both feet and learn my lesson after words.

29 lbs to go until I meet my first goooaaaallll

[Kelt]

I think we should wrap Mopsie in bubble wrap. Yikes!
I sure hope you feel better soon.

*********

Today was another good one.

The beach walk was pretty pathetic, 1-mile might be exaggerating. But I did bump into three of my regulars and enjoyed my social hour.

The pool was great! Going an hour and a half earlier than usual makes quite a difference, I pretty much have the joint to myself.

It was practice day, so I did pretty much the same thing as last time. My assisted paddle about with face in the water. Today it was easier, I came up with sort of a new count for breathing and it made things easier. I didn't feel like my breathing was too shallow and rushed. I was able to relax quite a bit and take things a little more slowly. Much less thrashing. About halfway through, I realized I had stopped humming. I guess that's progress!?!

Something I have kept meaning to do, but have forgotten each time, is to use the really nice big hot tub there also outdoors. For some reason after I've been in for 90 minutes I'm pretty chilled by the time I am done even though I have been active. That's why I usually go sit in the sun for a while afterwards. Today, it was a little cloudy and 75°, very nice but not a particularly warm sun. Today I went and sat in the hot tub for little while afterwards and it really helps a lot. I think it also helped my ankle a little bit.

One more thing. When I was there today I ran into the woman who turned me onto this place and her own coach (now mine too). She is 54, a couple of years older than me. Until two years ago she was also afraid of the water and did not know how to swim. I met her down on my beach, she now does open water swimming in San Francisco Bay. That was enough of an endorsement for me, and I credit her largely for getting me to take action on this. It was great to see her there.

My next lesson is tomorrow afternoon.

[nycfem]

Warning: In the mood to ramble.

I did 45 minutes, Interval program, level 5, on the Arc Trainer. Unfortunately Jill had a day where she really overdid it on the perfume, so she was on an elliptical behind me, and I kept getting wafts of perfume. What could be worse. Then the woman on the treadmill in front of me was on a long, loud cell phone conversation with her boyfriend. I spent the 45 minutes fantasizing about confronting both of them. Then I'd think about why it wasn't a good idea. For Jill, I thought, would I want our only real interaction to be me criticizing her when I think she's amazing? And if I confronted the woman on the cell phone, then what if -even though it's never happened before and I don't have the desire- I suddenly had a day where I wanted to have an extremely loud cell phone conversation myself, to throw back my head in annoying laughter and be oblivious to everyone around me while I pounded along on the treadmill, increasing my danger of falling by holding a phone? Well, say I did want to do that, and then, say, she happened to be there that day. She could march over to me, and say, "Well, now, isn't this the pot calling the kettle black. You yelled at me, and now you're doing it!" Did I want to take away this future option at the gym of getting to have my own uninterrupted, never ending phone conversation? Better to keep one's options open, I decided. And then I thought about Jill again, and how I do annoying things too, like carry my "terrorist" bag onto the gym floor (remember a woman confronted me about that). I thought to myself, "Keep quiet. Go with the flow. People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones." All of this ongoing annoyance and philosophizing passed the time. Then I did 15 minutes of yoga where I blissfully thought about nothing.

[Chancie]

I slept through the morning classes, so I am trying the same classes scheduled during the day. I'm a little nervous.

I'm also a little freaked out that I've been buying workout wear. I'm afraid someone's going to stop me and say, Who the hell do you think you are, wearing a sports bra and a tank top with a racer back, and what's with those droopy shorts?

[nycfem]

30 min. Arc Trainer, Interval, Level 5 (watched "I'm Having Their Baby"); 30 min. weight lifting, abs, stretching, and the like.

Warning: another curmudgeonly rant below.

The Whistler was at the gym during my whole time not on the cardio machine. She is one of my least favorite characters because she wears headphones and listens to music and snaps, all of which would be no problem, except that she whistles so loud and incessantly. I love pure quiet when I'm counting out reps in my head, and her whistling drives me nuts. I think next time I might kindly ask if she would mind going a little easier on the whistling. Who knew someone could whistle on and on so intensely? People do things when they have headphones on that I don't think they are fully aware of...

[MsTinkerbelly]

Howdy all...

Looking for new exercise ideas, as I know it helps with my health issues. I have been given the great idea of water exercises, and will look into those when I'm cleared to begin exercising.

Thank you to several of you that invited me to join you all here for motivation.

[Gemme]

It was a nice, easy day after a couple off. T5 and I got along well, as always. I was on it for 45 minutes total. I went a little over 2 miles at a good clip but didn't break a sweat as I am going to try to do a really hard workout tomorrow and didn't want to syphon any of my go go juice from that.

Welcome, newbies.

Whoa, mopsie! That's not what we mean when we say 'break a leg!'.



Jennifer, I'd be inclined to do or say something but I'm more obnoxious than you. Sometimes, a really long, pissed off and/or disgusted look does wonders.

[SometimesSweet]

Hi All,

Well I am proud of myself, I made it to the pool again today. Although I felt winded again after only 2 laps, that's okay because I am going to keep at it until I am back up to my 80 laps per day. I continued swimming though for another 30mins and just enjoyed being in the water and moving my body.

I also wanted to write that I love this thread because I don't feel alone in my weight loss journey. I don't know about anyone else but I am the type that wants to see results yesterday with only putting in minimum efforts. This thread reminds me that in order to get the results I have to put in the effort and then even more effort. So... thanks everyone for being here, for sharing your stories good or bad because they inspire me on my journey.

SS

[Gemme]

Good afternoon, exercisers!

I had a FANTASTIC workout today!!! I wore my brand new, never broke in, Brooks shoes and with the exception that I had to stop my workout to retie them reeeeeally tight to keep them on right, all was well. The deal with that is I have a size 7 shoe but I'm not a size 7. I'm almost always having to go up a size or two because the 'wide' version of my correct size....6-6.5....isn't wide enough.

So, anyway this is how my workout broke down:

First 13 minutes I'm warming up and coming to the realization that I'm going to have to make some shoe adjustments if I'm going to have a good, long workout. So, in that time frame I ecked out 50 cal and went .55 mph before I stopped and reassessed the shoe situation.

Not to be confused with "THE" Situation, who is a giant jerk imo.

By then, I was nice and warmed up, so I went for it from the 'beginning' of the second part of the workout. 104 minutes later, this is what I accomplished:

686 calories burned like toast, baby! (736 total!)
6.57 miles in the dust (7.12 total!)
117 minutes of my life, total, well spent

I decided to do a running interval for each section of mileage, breaking it down to easily managed increments. So, in theory, I would have 10 running intervals. 0-9, 10-19, 20-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, 60-69, 70-79, 80-89, 90-99 <--end of program length. This would be followed by the 5 minutes of cooldown.

For the first 7 intervals, it was amazing. I went between 2-3 minutes and speeds of 5.5-6.0 mph for each interval in my blocks of time and played around with incline a little bit in between, going up as high as 1.5.

After that, I did feel that I was tiring a bit, so I opted to only run 1 minute intervals from that point on and adding more if I felt up to it. I wound up still doing about 2 minutes of running intervals, but I broke it up into 2 separate 1 minute runs at 6.0 and 6.1 mph. That felt more manageable at the time. I did play less with the incline though and when I did do it, really only did .5 incline.

That worked out well until the 90-99 interval. I was pooped, y'all! So, I only ran one 1 minute interval but I did it at 6.1 mph as a balancing point.

Some stretching and I headed home.

Tomorrow will be a tiny bit of cardio to get things warmed up, followed by upper body and abs.

The shoes held up great and though my tootsies are tired, there's no pain. Just the slightly achy satisfaction from kicking a lot of ass.

[DapperButch]

Holy Crap! Great job, Gemme!

Originally Posted by Gemme

Good afternoon, exercisers!

I had a FANTASTIC workout today!!! I wore my brand new, never broke in, Brooks shoes and with the exception that I had to stop my workout to retie them reeeeeally tight to keep them on right, all was well. The deal with that is I have a size 7 shoe but I'm not a size 7. I'm almost always having to go up a size or two because the 'wide' version of my correct size....6-6.5....isn't wide enough.

So, anyway this is how my workout broke down:

First 13 minutes I'm warming up and coming to the realization that I'm going to have to make some shoe adjustments if I'm going to have a good, long workout. So, in that time frame I ecked out 50 cal and went .55 mph before I stopped and reassessed the shoe situation.

Not to be confused with "THE" Situation, who is a giant jerk imo.

By then, I was nice and warmed up, so I went for it from the 'beginning' of the second part of the workout. 104 minutes later, this is what I accomplished:

686 calories burned like toast, baby! (736 total!)
6.57 miles in the dust (7.12 total!)
117 minutes of my life, total, well spent

I decided to do a running interval for each section of mileage, breaking it down to easily managed increments. So, in theory, I would have 10 running intervals. 0-9, 10-19, 20-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, 60-69, 70-79, 80-89, 90-99 <--end of program length. This would be followed by the 5 minutes of cooldown.

For the first 7 intervals, it was amazing. I went between 2-3 minutes and speeds of 5.5-6.0 mph for each interval in my blocks of time and played around with incline a little bit in between, going up as high as 1.5.

After that, I did feel that I was tiring a bit, so I opted to only run 1 minute intervals from that point on and adding more if I felt up to it. I wound up still doing about 2 minutes of running intervals, but I broke it up into 2 separate 1 minute runs at 6.0 and 6.1 mph. That felt more manageable at the time. I did play less with the incline though and when I did do it, really only did .5 incline.

That worked out well until the 90-99 interval. I was pooped, y'all! So, I only ran one 1 minute interval but I did it at 6.1 mph as a balancing point.

Some stretching and I headed home.

Tomorrow will be a tiny bit of cardio to get things warmed up, followed by upper body and abs.

The shoes held up great and though my tootsies are tired, there's no pain. Just the slightly achy satisfaction from kicking a lot of ass.

[Kelt]

Originally Posted by Gemme

I decided to do a running interval for each section of mileage, breaking it down to easily managed increments. So, in theory, I would have 10 running intervals. 0-9, 10-19, 20-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59, 60-69, 70-79, 80-89, 90-99 <--end of program length. This would be followed by the 5 minutes of cooldown.

For the first 7 intervals, it was amazing. I went between 2-3 minutes and speeds of 5.5-6.0 mph for each interval in my blocks of time and played around with incline a little bit in between, going up as high as 1.5.

Dayum girl!!

Intervals are the best, it sounds like you won this round.

I was over on Greatist.com and under "fitness" they have a whole section about various and sundry ways to apply intervals.

You go...

[Kelt]

Hey fellow exercisers,

It has been a couple of days. I had another swimming lesson on Wednesday. I tried kickboard again, this time upside down and backwards, sort of. It seems that if I am on my back and holding the thing on my chest I actually go somewhere. Still can't do it the right way but I'll take this.

I took a practice day on Thursday. I took a few runs at facing the water paddling around without a flotation device and did alright as long as I was heading from shallow to shallower. I also decided that I wanted to get more comfortable in general in the water. Since I went earlier in the day and had the whole place to myself, I decided to play. I have been concerned about the potential for dizziness due to extenuating circumstances. So far I am fine on horizontal and vertical. But I wanted to find out what would happen in other situations.

I donned nose clips, and with my goggles made quite a sight. (Made sure there were 4 lifeguards with not much but me to look at), then I went ahead and played like I have seen the kids do. I tried handstands, somersaults, and log rolls in both directions. I got pretty disoriented the first couple of times because I didn't know what to expect. But then I found out that it would not make me dizzy and I had a lot of fun. I know, I wasn't doing very much proper "homework", but I enjoyed the heck out of myself.

I took it very easy on the beach walks for a couple of days, tapping out at about 1 mile, so that I would still have something left in my ankle for the pool. Today was an intentional day off from the pool, so I went a little longer on the sand walk to test things out. It seems to be coming along pretty well, I went a little over 3 miles without mishap. I have been using the big hot tub adjacent to the pool the last couple of days and I think it is really helping the ankle. I think I will probably give it a good hot water soak this evening at home also.

That's all I've got for now.

[Gemme]

I got a lot of physical stuff done at work, so I opted to tag this an 'off' day.

Back on the horse tomorrow!

[nycfem]

Today I did 1.5 hrs on the Arc Trainer, Level 5, Interval program, while still finishing the Amy Sedaris sit-com series "Strangers with Candy." I will miss it when it's over. I'm enjoying the heck out of it, laughing out loud while I sweat.

Then I did 1 hr of weight lifting, stretching, yoga, abs, back, and leg exercises. The gym was pretty empty and peaceful.

[Gemme]

I forgot that the gym closes early on the weekend, otherwise I would have made myself go last night. Eh. Live and learn.

Tomorrow for sure! No work, no excuses.