Making Strides - A Long Post

Last nights workout was so incredible! Which makes me laugh in a way. I never thought that I would use words such as awesome, amazing and incredible to describe a workout! Ardous, painful, horrid, yes, those are all words that I would expect to hear when associated with working out. But I am really enjoying my workouts and I love that I am feeling stronger every day. It is so awesome!

Rewind a bit. Sunday I had a skip workout day as planned. I also, for some reason, did not eat very much during the day. I am not sure why. I had carrot juice, a bunch of grapes, 2 oranges and a large salad. Then, since I was not doing a workout I debated on whether or not I wanted to indulge in some banana ice cream with all the fixins (raw of course!) I was hungry and wanted something. I almost just grabbed two more oranges but I decided to go ahead and make my ice cream treat because I really wanted to have some. The funny thing is that it did not taste as good as I remember it tasting. One of the pecans did not get all the way shelled and I bit into a shell that was so awful and sort of ruined it for me. I enjoyed my raw banana ice cream, it was good, but I was not rolling my eyes in joy and ecstasy over it. Which was really cool.

So yesterday was another good day. I had some carrot juice, a bunch of grapes and a couple of oranges throughout the day. Then I had a large salad for supper. I am beginning to see a trend here with my eating. I don't mind. The grapes at the store were really good. I love firm ripe grapes. I can't stand soft mushy grapes and it is often hard to find really good grapes so I want to enjoy them while I can. Also the oranges are just spectacular right now! So juicy and sweet. I love oranges!!! I could probably live on just oranges and grapes!

Then last night I mixed up my workout. I had been going for distance and trying to get a far as I could in 30 minutes. Did I mention that my last workout I went 2.32 miles in 30 minutes? Oh yeah, I did in my last post. Eventually I want to be able to do 3 miles in 30 minutes. So this week I am working more on strength and stamina rather than speed with the hopes that it will incease my speed in the process.

So this is what I did. I changed my resistance level every two minutes. I started out at a resistance of 1 for the first two minutes. Then I went to 3, then 5, then 7. Then I went down to a 2, up to 7, up to 9, down to 5, up to 11, down to 7, up to 11, down to 5, up to 13!! down to 7, then down to 3 for 1 minute and 1 for the final minute. It was so incredible!! Changing the level of intensity every 2 minutes really helped the workout to just fly by and it did not seem nearly as long. And it was so cool to be doing a level 5 intensity with ease because I had just finished doing an 11. And I maintained a speed of 4 mph average so by the time I finished the 30 minutes I had gone a little over 2 miles :) At the end of the 30 minutes I felt like I cold keep going and going but I wanted to save the workout on the machine so I could do it again. I ended up not being able to figure out how to save the workout afterall so I was very disappointed that I stopped for nothing since I couldn't get the workout to save. I will need to read the manual to figure out how to save workouts on the machine. I plan to do it again tonight. I may even go longer. Perhaps I should bump my workout time up? I don't know. I just know that I felt incredible after working out and it was such an awesome feeling.

We have a busy day today. I got up early this morning (more on that in a bit) to get a start on the dishes because the dishwasher repair man was coming to fix our dishwasher which broke the day before Thanksgiving and has been out of commision ever since. Then hubby called to ask me to come pick him up because his car had borken down on his way to work. So I had to gather all the children and get them out to the van to go pick him up and drop him off at work. Then we raced back here, I quickly did up the dishes and tidied up the kitchen. Then we waited around for the dishwasher repair guy to show up. He finally did and thankfully the dishwasher was easy to fix. It still cost $70 for him to come out here and look at it. I am not sure if I am happy that it was easy to fix, or annoyed that it cost us that much money for something stupid! Now the children are doing school. I need to take a shower and get ready to leave. The chidren have 4H later today, we need to go to the library to pick up some books that are on hold for us and then pick hubby up from work. Busy day!

I mentioned that I was up early and this is something really exciting to me as well. I am waking up earlier in the morning than I used to. Before I had to drag myself out of bed at 7:30. Sometimes I wouldn't get up until 8! That is way too late for me. I have so much to do and I can not afford to sleep in like that. By that time the children are all up and eating breakfast and I feel like I am behind and trying to catch up all day. I don't like that. But lately I have been waking up around 6:30. I like to get up before the children get up and get some stuff done. It is quiet. This would be a good time to get my devotionals in. this morning I woke up at 6 and was not even tired anymore. If my little angel had not been snuggled up next to me I would have just gotten up then, but I did not want to disturb her so I waited a bit and then put a pillow next to her and snuck away. It is so nice to finally be able to have the energy to get up earlier and not feel like such a slug!

Well, I guess this is long enough now. Biggest Loser tonight!! I love watching that show. I'm going to take some grapes along with me on our errands and try to drink a green smoothie before we go to fill me up.

I love raw!