Pre and Post 2010 Thanksgiving Dinner Workouts

Click me and see me trot

While a lot of people started their Thanksgiving Day doing 5 or 10K Turkey Trots in different venues, I, being a wimpy turkey trying to avoid the colder than usual temperature, opted out and did my own trot on the treadmill instead. Not that I wasn’t about to go out and run on the streets, but the late newspaper delivery (9:00 a.m.!!!) sealed my decision to make a run to nowhere, at the same time saving time and reading the newspaper. An hour plus an extra five minutes for the extra spoonful that I may eat during Thanksgiving dinner (unfortunately I lost control and ate more spoonfuls than I needed). What I noticed was that when I increased the pace towards the end of the run, I bounced lesser and was actually able to read the paper better. If only I could run that smoothly all the time.

After visiting a couple of stores on Black Friday (I’ll touch on that in another post), my day after Thanksgiving workout consisted of Spinning. No, I didn’t go to a gym and sign up for a class. However, I downloaded a free Spinning video and tried that workout for the first time. With the warm up and cool down, it was supposed to last an hour but the actual pedaling itself lasted only 50 minutes, but a tough 50 minutes it was. I added another 10 minutes to round it up to an hour. There was a lot of hill climbing and jumps in between seated pedaling using variable tension adjustments. It was a darn good workout leaving my calves slightly sore afterwards. It helped burn up a bit of my cousin’s good cooking from dinner the previous night.

It’s cold enough running outside at 9:00 A.M. so why would I want to wake up at 5:00 to run at 7:00? After all, I wimped out and ran on the treadmill on Thanksgiving morning. Well, after procrastinating the last few weeks whether to join the AREC winter group, I finally did on Saturday morning, without even knowing how far they were planning on running.  It was so darn cold that my face felt numb and to add to the discomfort, I forgot to bring my gloves, but I showed up and introduced myself to Gisele who organized it. She gave me a printout of the directions. The shorter run was supposed to be 7 miles and the longer, 13 miles. I haven’t run 7 miles much less 13 miles in months. My longest run was 6.75 miles earlier in the week and that was a run/walk. We started out and I found myself running alone because I couldn’t find someone with the same pace. After climbing the hill at the 4 mile mark, I saw Rosie and Tina, whom I ran 16 miles with last year, and joined them. We ran together for about 3 miles and I want to thank them for letting me pace with them because I didn’t want to run alone. That’s the reason why I woke up early to run there in the first place, so I can run with others. It turned out the shorter run was actually 8 miles instead of 7, which was not a problem for me on this particular day because running with Rosie and Tina helped a lot. My solo runs in recent months have taken a lot of effort to finish, even the ones which I run for 4 minutes and walk for 1 minute. Having company on Saturday morning plus not trying to push the pace made for a more comfortable run even with the extra mile or so. My ankles weren’t even hurting as much afterwards. If that’s the case, I may even return next week! Just remind me to bring my gloves and maybe even a ski mask.

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Burn Those Potluck Calories!

Did someone say sauna? As the heat peaked at about 1:30 on Monday afternoon with 100 degree plus, heat stroke inducing, temperatures outside and no cooling breeze, but a cooler 96 degrees indoors, I stayed in for a treadmill run. An artificial wind was created by pointing an electric fan against the front of the treadmill. Away I go as slowly as I can, trudging along while reading the newspaper, taking care not to splash my perspiration on it as much as possible. Helping along was an out-of-fashion tennis headband to keep the stinging sweat off my eyes. Upon completion of an hour, an additional 25 minutes of recovery walking was tacked on to burn off the excess calories consumed during a surprise potluck birthday party at work for 2 colleagues. The fare consisted of the usual greasy and fattening pizza, hot wings, meatballs, chips with extra hot homemade salsa, two different kinds of cakes, cheese cake, and bread pudding. The one hour and twenty five minute workout was a first step in taking care of those calories. A newly acquired book/magazine holder for the treadmill/stationary bike/elliptical machine was put into good use. A good, sweaty, calorie burning workout on a sweltering day. Summer at fall is here. It’s good to run again!

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Cautious Running

Never in the history of my running life have I been laid off so long and so often. Last Saturday I began what I hoped was a return to some semblance of running by doing the 1 minute jog with 1 minute walk intervals. I haven’t tried again since then until Thursday morning and just by sheer coincidence. I was just planning on taking a walk when I heard my downstairs neighbor leave to take her kids to school, so I fired up the treadmill instead, and started a very slow jog on it while reading the newspaper at the same time. A matter of feeding the mind and the body all at once. Since the newspaper covered the console, that gave me an excuse of not peeking too often at the elapsed time. I was hoping that my recently injured right calf could handle at least 15 minutes non-stop. When that time passed, I hoped for 5 more minutes, then another, then another. In the meantime I was monitoring how the calf felt but with the distraction of reading, I managed to keep going until I reached 45 minutes. Erring on the side of caution, I finally stopped even when I felt that I could do more. For a cool down, I took a 45 minute walk to and from the bank to withdraw some money. It’s always good to find a an excuse or reason to propel yourself at your own power when you have a reachable goal. That way you finish an errand and also engage in exercise. If my calf holds up and recovers, on my next run I will have to learn a lot of self control by not going too far or pushing the pace when I am feeling good. For people who hate exercising, self control means finding the motivation to do it. For me, it is the opposite. It is finding the courage to not overdo it. I’m considering keeping my runs on the treadmill for now to lessen the impact on my legs and to be able to keep the pace constant. Please, please, keep me from pressing the UP button!

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My Home Gym Is Complete

      After many years of accumulating exercise equipment at home, I can unequivocally say that my home gym is complete, even though it is missing weight stack machines. What I have is an array of aerobic specific equipment comprised of a treadmill, rowing machine, stairstepper, upright stationary bike, recumbent stationary bike, and the latest addition, an elliptical trainer. Those plus a couple of hundred pounds of free weights in the form of dumbbells and barbells, complete the home gym. I must not forget to mention the chin up/pull up bar attached to a door frame. The pursuit of fitness is not really a pursuit for me but rather a daily habit that needs to be completed. Since I have been unable to run every day for the last four years, I need the variety of workout machines to keep me engaged.

      In addition, what gym would be complete without a weighing scale? A few months ago when I thought the springs of my mechanical, round-dial type bathroom scale had worn out, I finally succumbed to technology and bought an electronic scale that measured weight, body fat percentage, and hydration level. How exactly that happens is hard to explain but has something to do with electrical impedance in which a very small amount of electrical current passes through your body while standing on the scale and your fat percentage and hydration levels are measured. Sounds like a good concept but which I find inaccurate. Case in point: pre-run, it indicates that my hydration level is 63.5%, then post-run when I’ve lost three pounds of fluids, the hydration level goes up about 1%. How can you lose fluids and gain hydration level? Another example: before running, my body fat percentage is show as 12.5%, and after running, 11.5%. Certainly I only lost fluid weight and not fat. I hope at least the weight measurement is accurate.

      So there you go, I have equipment for cardiovascular fitness and endurance, plus free weights for muscular strength and endurance. Flexibility is the only missing link to attain overall fitness. Two out of three ain’t bad.

      I know, I know… ain’t is not proper English.

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Space… The Final Frontier

Upon receiving my federal income tax refund on February 26^th, I earnestly embarked on a journey for the search for Spock. Oops, wrong journey. Let me regroup and rephrase: I searched the internet for a good deal on elliptical trainers (not the ellipses of heavenly bodies). The one I found with the features I wanted was on Overstock.com with a shipping price of $2.99. I searched Amazon.com for the same product and it was $20.00 lesser plus free shipping and no sales tax. I waited a couple of days for the government check to clear and by the time I checked Amazon again, the price of the elliptical trainer had gone up $20.00 more, with 5 left in stock. The initial price of the machine must have been that good that people were buying them quickly. Another economic theory in action: when the demand is high, the price goes high. I put in my order anyway and sent an email to customer service to see if they would roll back the price by $20.00. It was no go, but I think I still got a good deal with the free shipping and no sales tax. Why I didn’t consider looking at Amazon when I bought my treadmill last summer, I don’t know. I just stuck with Walmart after seeing the treadmill features and price I wanted.

Meanwhile, in my tiny corner of the cosmos, I’m concerned about space or lack thereof in my gym/living room. I’ve been trying to visualize how I can rearrange the rest of the exercise equipment so I can fit in the elliptical machine once it’s delivered and assembled. The only way I can make it work is to move aside the folding machines when not in use and pull them back out whenever I want to use them. That means the stairstepper and the rowing machine because the upright and recumbent bikes don’t fold, and even though the treadmill folds also, it’s too heavy to move around. Oh my, half of the living room will be a maze of cranks, levers, cylinders, gears, belts, and pedals. If I had a wife, she’d probably put me in the garage and leave the exercise equipment alone. Good thing I live by myself.

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