My Journey With Health And Fitness – Time For A Reality Check

This afternoon we are watching Spirited, the Apple TV holiday movie with Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds. This is after we spent the morning doing a deep clean of our kitchen (prepping for the upcoming holiday season). After we were finally done cleaning I thought I might as well put my laundry on to get it done during the movie. Since I was wearing my workout clothes and wanted them washed I decided I might as well put on my Xmas jammies. Why not as we are watching Spirited. My husband was not impressed and decided since I am already into the holiday season he might as well drag out the Xmas trees (yes we have 2). It took all of my ability to convince him we were not putting up the trees yet.

Yesterday I got to try my new treadmill for the first time. As I mentioned the other day it is very different from the old one and comes with 12 pre-set programs. My goal was that over the next 2 weeks I would get up to level 12 by simply moving up to the next program each day, on paper the speeds all seem pretty easy. First thing yesterday morning I started out on level 1 and I set it for 1 hour which gave me 20 three minute segments. I thought it was pretty easy, as a matter of fact the slower segments were too slow for me. Absolutely I should move up to the next level.

I did my 2nd walk after lunch yesterday. Yep, went up to level 2 because hey, I’m fit so this shouldn’t be a problem. I was going along doing pretty well when bam! I’m in the middle 3rd of the workout and the speed jumped up significantly. It was too slow for a jog but way faster than I am used to walking. Moreover, instead of just doing 1 segment at that speed it would do 2, give a 1 segment slight slow down, then back at it again. By time I got through that 3rd I was sweating away and thinking maybe I was a little ambitious thinking I could get through all the levels in 2 weeks. I finished up and realized that was the best workout I had done in weeks (I still haven’t been running as that pesky ankle is not quite ready yet though very close).

There was still a 3rd walk to be done yesterday and I realized there was no way I could do another walk at level 2. However, I didn’t really like the idea of doing level 1 again as it was too easy. So, I opted to do a combination of the pre-set program level 1 with manual control of the speed. That just simply meant when the segment speed dropped too low for me I would bump it up to a speed that was lower than the top speed in this level but higher than their easy segment speed. I got a much better workout than I had on the 1st walk without overdoing it.

Today I got back on the treadmill and thought I might as well do level 2 again so that I can build up. It was a little better today than yesterday but still tough. While normally Saturdays I only do 1 workout I decided to add in a 2nd one doing level 1 but again bumping up the speed when I felt it was too easy. Overall I was happy with the amount of zone minutes I got in and quite frankly I feel pretty good.

I should note, I do really like the new treadmill. It is more high-tech than the old one (probably because it is 20 years newer) and I have to say it is more comfortable and feels more stable. I think I’ll be happy using especially on cold and wet days though it will never replace walking/running outside.