Burn With Us

So, I’ve talked about how I want to run but I have bad knees, the weather sucks, etc. The solution has been discovered. Yesterday I went to the mall and had some time to walk around by myself. I wound up in the sporting good store where an elliptical machine was on sale for well under what I’ve ever seen them go for. It’s not a top of the line machine, it’s the store brand, but they said they hadn’t received any complaints about it. And I don’t need (and can’t afford) a thousand dollar beast, anyway. The sale ended yesterday, so after a call to the husband, I bought it. Then he, being the wonderful guy that he is, drove over an hour to come pick it up for me because it didn’t fit in my little car. He put it together for me this morning, and I just finished my first workout. I love it. There are 6 built-in workouts, or I can manually control the resistance. I did 20 minutes of the weight loss workout, which was pretty intense. The levels went from 1 (least) to 5 (pretty tough). It shifted resistances up and down every minute or two, which was nice. I wound up keeping a quicker pace than I do when I walk or jog outside, and I feel great. The machine keeps track of the pulse rate, too, so I can make sure to keep that in range. I got a pretty good workout at the bottom of my range (95). I plan to do another 20 minutes tonight and hope to work up to doing the complete 30 minute workout by the end of the week. My legs couldn’t take it today because of the resistance. Oh, and I’ve lost four pounds just doing my regular walking routine and taking the magical weight loss vitamins. I know the only reason those are helping is the extra caffeine – I’m not too tired to do what I need to do! My goal with this new machine is to work out 4+ times a week until I get to my target weight and then keep it up at least three times a week.

I had to move some books around in order to help get the spot for the machine set up. I found some old zines I was published in (anyone remember Redsine?), and it was funny to see things like an ad for Black Petals boasting a story by Mike Oliveri. Ah, those were the days…