Chicken with salad

Another bugbear of mine…  I hate hills.  Yep, I’ll walk as far and for as long as you want me to – on the flat.  I’ll charge madly down a hill faster than I should.  But put me in front of a hill to walk UP and I’ll grumble and groan and carry on like it’s the end of the world.

So todays cardio session with “hill sprints” in it had me groaning in anticipation of what was to come.  Admittedly, I have to do all my training while at home during baby naps – especially anything on the treadmill.  Cardio days seem to put me on there for about 40 minutes straight, so I have to be sure she’s down and hope she stays down long enough for me to get through everything.  Today I was in luck…

20 minutes jogging at 8km/hr – no worries.  Yes, of course I worked up a sweat – it was 90% humidity outside and I had the windows open.  Then interval sprints.  This is tricky on a treadmill that only goes up to 10km/hr!  So I just reduced the rest period between “sprints” and got through it ok.  Then came the hard part, the hill interval sprints… I have NO idea what a “steep” incline is on a treadmill.  So I just cranked it up to 10 (percent? degrees?), kept the speed at 10km/hr and went for it.  Can I just say OUCH!  The first couple were ok, but after that the quads and butt really started burning.  Felt damn good to get it done though!

I think this is going to be a really tough one for me, but definitely satisfying to get through it.  Actually, thinking back on it, I don’t think I did enough intervals… hmmm, something to remember next time!

And how are the push ups going?  Well, I haven’t actually made it to 50 in a day yet.  But I am doing several sets of 10 each day and they ARE getting easier.  Tomorrow for sure!

Healthy muffins

Very exciting – got my new heart rate monitor late Friday!  It’s a basic Garmin model but does everything I think I want it to do and after a workout I can get a summary on the watch itself or transfer the details to my computer and get graphs of my heart rate over the time of the workout.  Unfortunately it didn’t seem to be picking up my heart rate for about the first half hour, but otherwise it’s looking pretty good.  Am looking forward to using it on a run or walk outside so I can get the gps involved and plot it all on a map.  My average heart rate for the workout was 118 with a spike up to 196 at one point!

At the start of the program I was doing the beginner level – even though I achieved Intermediate on all the activities except the sit ups (no surprise there with post-pregnancy tummy!) and missed Intermediate by 1 second on the 1km time trial.  I thought having done no exercise for so long and with the pregnancy in the middle that I should start at the beginning.  Seemed like a good idea at the time and the first week I found it all hard enough. By the end of the first week though and through the second week I was getting through the exercise feeling a bit tired from it but otherwise pretty good.  I had no post exercise muscle soreness and although I struggled on one or two of the exercises and couldn’t complete all the reps at the time, I recovered really, really quickly.  So afer talking it over with my husband and a couple of friends, I decided to move up to Intermediate.  Then of course this week I missed half the sessions… I’m not sure how much of a difference there is between Beginner and Intermediate there is at the moment, but damn, I certainly noticed the session yesterday.  My quads were still sore in the afternoon and this morning I am feeling it in my upper back and calves.  Feels pretty good though!

Looking forward to a day of rest today and spending time with my little family – trying the baby out on solids for the first time, should be interesting!

I realise that exercise is supposed to hurt a bit, that means my muscles are actually doing something.  Providing of course that it’s just that “good” pain of muscle burn, not that “bad” pain of joints being asked to do things they don’t want to yet.  I’ve had a few clicks and things from knees, but it always seems to be when I get sloppy on the exercises and am not doing them properly, back to proper form and the clicking goes away – phew!  But really, knowing that it’s going to hurt, that it’s supposed to hurt, doesn’t really help when it IS hurting – like now.  Especially when I know that todays exercise includes squats in the first set…

So while the exercise is painful, I know it will get easier and I know I will like the results.  In the meantime though, there is NOTHING painful about eating meals like this:

Thai fishcakes and salad

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