View from a Treadmill

Several years ago, when I was training for a half-marathon, I hated the treadmill. Hated it. I was a treadmill snob: "I run outdoors, thanks. The view is better." The treadmill was only to be used as a back-up plan, the emergency indoor workout when outside was too wet, too thunderstorm-y, too icy, or during summer when there was no way I was getting up at 4 am to run in the cooler, 80-degree pre-dawn. Nope. Treadmills were B-O-R-I-N-G.

Well, here I am now, quite a bit fatter and in terrible, terrible shape, and now, guess what? The treadmill is my friend. True, the view isn't as spectacular as running outside - you don't get the vast expanse of blue skies with puffy white clouds, you don't have tall rustling trees and birdsong, there are no curious horses pricking up their ears as you come huffing over a hill.  You may not get these things, but what you get that I am Eternally Grateful for is this: Air conditioned comfort and a machine that keeps track of the time and calories. It's just what I need, for now.  

Here are some views - and observations - from the treadmill.

Ellipticals and the gym entry. Also, the cardiac rehab center is just over there. And if anything is going to make me feel like more of a schlub, it's those folks over there in cardiac rehab. They have actual, verifiable heart conditions. I have an eating condition and a laziness condition. Seriously.

The weight machines. You can't really tell what the lady in the yellow looks like because, duh, I was on a treadmill attempting to take pictures around me - but the lady in yellow is my new hero. She is about five-foot-nothing and bristling with muscles. I watched her on the fly machine - she put on 5 stacks of weights. FIVE. Dang. I am totally intimidated and totally inspired: I want to Be. Her.

The fitness class area. Right now they're doing Bodypump. If I weren't on the treadmill I'd be in that room. I hate the exercise they're doing right now; you have to use bands and get them on just the right way and do these killer lunges. It's hard to keep your balance AND keep the bands from whipping off and snapping your legs. Fun times. 

Since I am apparently unable to run (eh, jog - sllllooooowwwwwly) for more than five minutes at a time, I am doing this C25K program (Couch To 5K - that's cute, right, the acronym?) which involves mostly walking with some intermittent jogging. Hence, the treadmill. I do this 3 times a week. The other 3 days I do something low-impact - like Bodypump or a water aerobics class. 

After the treadmill I do the elliptical. 

My attempt to remain hidden behind rows of people on the ellipticals is foiled when all the other people LEAVE. That means, the nursery - right there! Clear glass! - has a direct view out onto the gym. Luckily the windows aren't full-length. If they were my little grandson would've seen me, and then it's Goodbye machine, hello screaming baby.

 While on the elliptical I could hear the occasional screech from the nursery. I know this screech quite well. It's my grandson's happy screech of joy. Hooray for a new place with new toys to play with!  Just wish the baby could be happy without the random, piercing, parrot-like screeches.

Workouts this week / 336 days till the Spartan!

Chatty description coming up, after family obligations. Briefly: good news, I worked out! Bad news, I'm still fat.

...Okay, here's the wordiness.

The two pix below are snapshots I took of the screen on the treadmill stairclimber Nordictrack whatever that machine is at the gym, where you get on it and you do this sort of gliding motion with your feet, while at the same time you busily push on this lever-like thing with your hands. Whatever that thing is - it's okay for the knees, apparently, since my knee doesn't really complain on that machine. So, two workouts on that machine. (Not in one day.)

 

Now, what you can't see here are the classes I took at the gym this past week. One class has you throwing weights around. Shamefully, I could only deal with, like, zero weight to begin with. I mean, I did at least have the weight-less bar to push around like some sort of loony-bin escapee ("Why, yes, there are weights on this bar, don't you see them?....No, I haven't heard from Commander Zog today, but I'm sure the Martian invasion is still on.") Luckily, after a couple sessions of this class, my body started to catch on to the fact that, yes, we do even lift, bro! and so I added some weights to the bar. Hardly much of anything, but more than zero. I should've taken a picture: those tiny, bitty 2-kg weights on the bar looked super dumb! Mice could lift more. Dwarf mice. Dwarf mice with a debilitating muscle disease! Thankfully, God In His Infinite Mercy allowed my body to graduate to 5-kg weights. They look bigger on the bar, and yes, they're heavier. Most importantly those bigger weights make me look like less of a blubbery wimp.

The other class I took was some type of Core / Cross-Fit class. It's where you slave away to lift various parts of your body into various contorted positions for miserably long amounts of time, while the teacher cheerfully bellows at you to keep your "Elbows In!" or "Just TEN MORE!" or some other tyrannical nonsense, that all just means she is secretly trying to kill you through floor exercises. I think I'll try this class again. I didn't actually die, although I wanted to; and it does seem like a good way to maybe someday eventually get into halfway better shape than I'm currently in. Most importantly I suspect the teacher's verbal abuse is similar to the kind that gets dished out at the Spartan race. Might as well get used to that now.

Now, here is a picture of me, today, not at the gym. I just finished 1 mile:

Much to my continued chagrin, I was not, in fact, able to run even part of that mile. I could not even muster up a ridiculously slow jog. No, that was not possible today. Was it the knee? you may ask sympathetically. Yes, it was the knee, a little bit. More than that, there was some kind of leg/hip pain that didn't want to go away. I'm sure it was a hip flexor complaining about over-use, since it was so badly abused in that evil Core training class yesterday...but since that particular leg is the one attached to the wonky knee, I figured it best not to push it. I did keep trying, hopefully, to trot around just a bit; alas, every single attempt was met with a sharp shooting pain and a tiny little hip flexor sigh of exasperation. So I walked. Then about a third of the way into my walking mile, the knee did start to feel slightly uncomfortable. Which meant it would be good simply to finish a one-mile walk without destroying any currently functioning joint or muscle in my body. So, no jogging for me today. A couple of barking dogs, yes, but no jogging.

And finally, we have this:

 

 Dearest darling hubby, the light of my life, my best friend and soul mate, has recently brought it to my attention that I may not be as young as I used to be, once, a long time ago; and in fact, it might be a good idea to take anti-inflammatories after a workout. 

Oh, the humiliation. Not only am I fat and out of shape, I'm taking Motrin just to keep moving.

But it's all good, in the end. So what if I have to take NSAIDS after a workout? At this stage, it's good that my butt isn't velcroed in to the sofa. If it takes some Motrin after a workout to deal with the pain, at least I'm working out. And I don't think I'll do this every time. Mostly, just after an intense workout, or after working out some part of my body I never knew existed until then.

Just 336 Days until the race!

Hi there! Thanks for following my blog. I'm a Texas mom, recently a grandmother, and I love the Lord, my family, and a good story well told. 

I started this blog for a couple of reasons.

1.) In the crazy-busy-ness of life, I need to find balance between spirituality and everyday reality.  I don't know about you but for me, this is hard. If Bible reading and prayer time are put off "until later when I have time," I find that, more often than I'd care to admit, "put off" really means "not gonna happen."


2.) I need accountability.  God knows I wish I didn't need some outward system of regulation to keep me focused, but I do! Several years ago I lost 38 pounds on Weight Watchers.  It was all about tracking the food and the accountability of going to the meetings, and facing the weigh-in, that kept me on the right path.  Now, several years later and with more than 38 pounds gained back, I need to fit into my clothes again....without going crazy, and preferably without paying to go to meetings.

3.) Last but not least, I miss writing. A long time ago when I was thinner and had fewer (well, zero) children, I wrote pretty much daily. Typed, actually. On a typewriter. I guess it was more journaling than anything; I never really did much fiction, although I would try my hand at the occasional poem....anyway, I enjoyed writing, and I'd like to rediscover this simple pleasure. 

So here I am. Blogging.  I hope to accomplish a few things with this blog. Intangibly, I'd like to recover and improve upon my writing ability.  If you have some constructive criticism for me, I'm open to that. But be kind, okay? More tangibly, I plan on establishing a daily routine that will allow me to spend time with the Lord as well as make time to improve my health. To that end, I am planning to wake up early tomorrow morning to continue my Bible reading program; additionally, I've already been working out several times a week at the gym, and I plan to keep doing that and to expand my routine to include more weights.  Also, I expect to return to healthy eating habits. (Ha! At Christmastime? Ha! Hahaha! .....sigh....) I have to do something before my hips alone require their own zip code, so my plan is to start tracking my eating and to post it here.  Not sure yet what I'll be using to track. Thinking about "My Fitness Pal." Or maybe just writing down what I ate, without being worried about the calories. Either way, I believe that by being honest, transparent, and consistent in tracking, I will end up losing weight.

I think I'm going to weigh in at the gym tomorrow.  (shudder)