iFit Scottish Highland Series Ben Nevis Hike Part 3 The Highlands, Scotland Day 14

It's Wednesday! I skipped walking yesterday and almost skipped today. It was a long day at work and I just didn't want to walk, but by the time we were close to home, I had convinced myself that I should walk and hubby said he was going to take a shower so that gave me no excuses and a whole lot of guilt if I didn't walk, so I did it. I got up there and I got the last part of this dang series done. I still want to go back and redo the first and second walks because those are the ones that I failed at. They were also a good learning experience though. I now know that I can change the speed without losing the elevation changes. It's the only thing that got me through the rest of these walks! It also means I can try new things that I wouldn't have before. 

This thing sucked. It was supposed to be .7 mile with 551.6 feet of elevation. It was set between 1.8 and 2.0 miles per hour. I started at 1.5 and then went down to 1.0. For the last bit, I went back up to 1.5, but I only went .45 miles and 331 feet of elevation. More than 200 feet of elevation short. I still feel very accomplished though. This was hella crazy elevation for me! There were like zero breaks. It was at 12% to 20% for like 20 minutes! My calves were killing me by the time I was done! When I was in the big 20% incline section, I kept telling myself that it would never get steeper than this! Then once the 20% stuff was over, I did that at 18%. After the second to last hill, I checked the time and just kept chanting, "Less than four minutes. Only one hill left. I can do that!" I would then change to 3-1/2 minutes, 3 minutes, 2-1/2 minutes, 2 minutes, 1-1/2 minutes and one minute. It was great! I am a great motivator. I convinced myself to stay up there! Woot woot! 

I had a longer than normal cool down because I needed to get to 30 minutes to get my 100 points for my Engage for Health. I didn't get any eggs hatched. I didn't have Adventure Sync on so I'm not sure if I'll get the credit. So far, I'm not getting my 30 minute workout credit either. I'm only getting credit for my 3,000 steps walked which is only 30 points! I'm getting shorted 70 points. I'm sure it will fix itself at some point, but for now, I'm bummed! 

iFit Scottish Highland Series Ben Nevis Hike Part 2 The Highlands, Scotland Day 13

Today is Monday! Woot Woot! I actually like Monday. I get to go back to work! I like my job! It's also quieter now on Mondays with the new schedule that we have. I was sooooooo tired when I woke up. I thought for sure I was going to fall asleep at my desk. I had no car to leave though so I had to tough it out. Around mid-morning, I started to get my second wind. I was exhausted on the drive home though. I told my husband I didn't want to walk, but then I convinced myself to walk and then not and then to and then not and then to. I knew this walk was going to be hell and I just didn't want to do it, but I knew that I had to do it. This was supposed to be 657 feet in elevation over .9 miles. That's a lot with no breaks. No breaks at all! There were some little blips where it went down so it wasn't as hard, but on a treadmill, you don't stop to take pictures. All you do is walk! I wasn't so sure I could get through this, but I wanted to try. Don't tell anyone at work, but getting points for  Engage for Health is kinda what pushed me over the edge to get on here. I didn't even have 1,000 steps today so that would have been no activity points for the day. I couldn't have that.

I started out with 1.5mph. He was going some crazy speed that was just about running. Not that he himself was doing it, but the machine was set to have me race. Screw that! No way was I doing faster than 1.5. I tried to set up my heart rate monitor to my watch today and it worked, but then I guess I didn't hit the start button so once I hit start on the treadmill, the heart rate monitor hooked up to the treadmill. I still get credit for a 30 minute walk though (with warm up and cool down) so I get 100 points for Engage for Health.

This walk was hell. I'm not going to sugar coat it at all. It was absolute hell. I started at 1.5 mph and then just kept kicked it down until I was at 1mph. I felt like a failure going that slow, but I wanted to give up so many times and I kept going so I guess I'm happy with that. My heart was going crazy and I could barely breathe. My calves were killing me! I'm not sure if I'll be able to walk tomorrow, but I kept going. Graham McTavish was the leader for this one as well, but he brought a friend. I think that was because it was hell and he knew he couldn't talk the whole way up this hill! The next walk is supposed to be worse. I don't think I'll be doing it tomorrow. 

My phone was in my pocket for this walk, but it's being slow to update my Adventure Sync with Pokemon Go and my Engage for Health app is being slow to update with Polar Flow. I did that hellacious walk. I want to see eggs hatch! I want to see my 100 points on Engage for Health. 

iFit Scottish Highland Series Ben Nevis Part 1 The Highlands Scotland Day 12

Today is Saturday! We stayed up way too late last night and we slept in way too long this morning. I also spent way too much time making calls and writing reports today. It was after 1:00 and I hadn't had lunch or a shower. I knew that if I didn't get on the machine soon, it was not going to happen. I woke up feeling like I was going to be sick today, but I've been like that for about two weeks! I have no idea what's going on. I wake up feeling like crap and then later I feel fine. 

I was not really looking forward to this. I knew there was a giant hill at the end. What I forgot about or didn't realize was that it also had a long 10% incline section which sucked. I've done longer sections, but for some reason, I really get bored on long stretches at the same incline. I love iFit because it does the ups and downs for me. If I wanted long sections of the same thing, I'd just set it to manual and go at the same incline. I got through it though and kept going. I started this at 2.5MPH and then went down to 2MPH at the first hill. I stayed there until the last hill. I knew that last hill was going to kill me so I went down to 1.5MPH. At that point, both of my feet were asleep. Not sure what was going on, but I could seriously not feel my feet. I kept going which may have been stupid, but whatever. Once the walk leveled out to zero at the end of the last hill, feeling came back to my feet. Seems odd, but that's what happened. I did a 2 minute cool down and by the time it was over, my feet were tingly, but felt pretty good.

Graham McTavish did this walk as well. He spent a lot of time talking about kilts. He also talked about the battle of the shirts and rattled on about his acting career. I think these walks would be really cool for someone who is a fan of this man. I just don't really care about his acting career. He mentioned something about how when one door closes another one opens. Then he talked about how he was offered a job and then wanted this other one instead so he got out of the first one to do the second one. I'm like yeah so that's not really one door closing and another opening. That's you walking away from a commitment. I don't care that he did it, but I don't find it very motivational or inspiring and it's not a good example of one door closing and another one opening. 

I hatched two eggs! One was a 10km egg! It was a giant pink fish. It's adorable and it's the first one that I've gotten so that was fun! It's called Alomomola. The other was a 2km egg. It was a Venipede. Pretty soon I'll have enough candy to evolve it! Woot woot! 

Not much else to say right now. I need to go deal with finding food for lunch. Oooooooooh! I was doing my labels when I clicked it over to my Engage for Health app and I learned something amazing! If I keep my Polar M400 watch in my pocket while doing the walk, I can get credit for workouts! I have tried this before, but it wasn't working for me. This is going to be a game changer in the points department! If I walk on the treadmill for 30 minutes, I get 100 points! I need to go back and see if I got any points for previous days from when I was experimenting with this and thought it hadn't worked! This is soooooooo awesome and might actually give me more motivation to get on the treadmill! 

iFit Scottish Highland Series Steall Gorge Waterfall Hike The Highlands, Scotland Day 11

Today was Thursday! We stayed up and watched The Masked Singer last night. We were soooooooo surprised by the guy who got voted off. We had zero idea that it would be him! I love this show!!! Okay so I had no desire at all to walk, but I wanted the points on Engage for Health and I wanted to hatch and egg. I got up there and got it done! 

Today was the 11th day of this series and I'm on track with the 11th walk in the series. I'm impressed that I was able to stay on track with the corrected days. I did really badly on the Easter Island Walking Tour. 

This was another relatively flat walk. I had to go slower than him though. He was up to 3MPH for some sections. Not that he himself actually walked that fast! I did 2.6 for the whole thing and was okay with that. My back got a little sore again, but that's normal for me. I really need to get back to the chiropractor. This walk was on a narrow rocky path. He was rarely looking in the direction he was walking. I have no idea how he didn't die. 

This was supposed to be 73 feet in elevation and 1.2 miles, but mine was 70 feet and 1.09 miles. I wasn't too far off, so I'm good. So far, I haven't hatched an egg, but I forgot to feed my buddy so maybe I screwed something up. I know my phone was keeping track of the steps because I got over 4k for my Engage for Health app. Oh well. Time to deal with dinner so if I hatch an egg, I just won't tell you all about it. I'm kinda bummed though since hatching the egg was one of the reasons I.......Ooooooooooooh! It's hatching. It was a Turtwig. Okay time to deal with dinner now! 

iFit Scottish Highland Series, Caledonian Canal Hike The Highlands, Scotland Day 10

Today is Wednesday! The week is more than half over. Woot Woot! I say that like I hate my job, but I love my job, so I'm okay with going to work. Anyway......I got home and was super hungry and not really in the mood for a walk, but I got up there and I got it done! This is day 10 of my Scottish Highland Series from iFit. I think I only have four left, but I feel like I have more than that. It's official. I just checked, and I do indeed only have four left, but I still have the first few to redo since things went badly. 

This one was pretty flat. It was supposed to be 1.4 miles and 17 feet of elevation. He went faster than I could do for that distance especially since the machine seems to die if I do a sustained distance at 2.7. Oh well. I went 2.6MPH for the whole thing so I went 16 feet in elevation and 1.31 miles in distance. It wasn't that much off what it should have been. 

Graham McTavish was the leader again. He rattled on about a battle in Scotland a bunch of years ago. He talked about other stuff, but I'm not really sure what. I stopped paying attention. It was a nice view. The walk wasn't hard. My left shoulder was sore though. not sure why. I still hold onto the bars. I really need to work on that. I get scared though when I let go. I feel like I'm going to fall off and I also can't go as fast so there's that. If I go slower, I won't get as many steps for my egg hatching and points for Engage for Health for work! 

I hatched one Pokemon Go egg. It was a 2km egg with a Piplup. Blah! After the walk, I realized that I had forgotten to put in my 10km egg! Grrrrrrrr. 

Okay, time for dinner! 

iFit Scottish Highland Series Old Man of Storr Part 2 Isle of Skye Scotland Day 8

Today is Sunday. I took another couple days off from walking. I was so exhausted yesterday. I slept like half the day and then didn't sleep well last night. UGH! Oh well. Today, I was messing around with the Engage for Health app with work and found something that made me wonder if I could get extra points using my Polar device instead of using just my iPhone for steps since my iPhone doesn't have an activity tracking. The iWatch has it, but not the iPhone from what I can tell. I wanted to get up on the treadmill to mess around with it. 

This walk was the next one in line so I picked it since I'm trying to do this one in order. The first one is what I did and the second one is the template of what I should have done, but I can't go as fast as they have it set. I started at 2.5, then went to 2.0 and down to 1.7 for the hill. Then I got up to 2.6 for the low incline parts and then 2.0 for the final incline. It actually went pretty well. I didn't want to die on the hills. I wasn't counting down the seconds. I kept track of the time, but I wasn't staring at the clock. I was supposed to do 211 feet of elevation and 1.3 miles, but I did 189 feet of elevation and 1.21 miles. 

I discovered that I've actually been using the wrong heart rate monitor. Oopsy! I've been using the one that came with my Polar watch and not the one that came with the treadmill. The one that came with the watch still works with the treadmill. It just won't connect to the treadmill and the watch at the same time so I have to decide which one I want to work. 

Graham McTavish was the leader of the walk. My husband was watching TV so I didn't really hear everything that was said during the walk. There was some discussion on diet and exercise. 

This was my first time messing with the watch while using the treadmill. I think I need to do some more work on that. I had it in my pocket since I hold onto the handlebars on the treadmill. At some point, the watch stopped tracking my time. It stopped at like three and a half minutes which was stupid. Not sure if that's because it's a GPS watch and I was on a treadmill so I wasn't moving. It could have also just whacked something in my pocket. We shall experiment more with that later. I've been working on syncing the watch with the app on my phone ever since I got off the machine. It took some time to figure out how to actually sync it and now that it's syncing, I'm getting impatient. It's taking sooooooooooooooooooo soooooooooo long! I gave up and then tried again and now I'm confused. It says I had some activity, but only like 500 steps. I think it might be synced at this point, so I'll try again tomorrow. 

I hatched a Pokemon Go egg. It was a luvdisc. ugh. Oh well.  

iFit Scottish Highland Series Old Man of Storr Hike Part 1 Isle of Skye, Scotland Day 7

Today is Friday. My last walk was on Monday. I've been pretty tired. I was also just not in the mood for walking up this horrid hill. I think if I had picked a different series, I would have been more successful in going through it without taking giant gaps. This was supposed to be 1.3, but I had to slow the pace down so it was 1.09. I'm okay with that. I didn't stop the hills. I only changed the speed. I survived even though there were times that I thought I would not! My glutes were on fire! My back hurt and I just wanted to be done. This was supposed to be 537 feet, but it ended up 442 feet. I'm also okay with that. 

I started out with 2.5MPH and then went to 2MPH and the slowest was 1.5MPH. I was so tempted to go slower than that on the last hill section. That hill sucked. The little dip and then the increase again was just cruel! It would have been better to just not have that dang dip! Oh well. I got through it. I'm happy to be done with it. I didn't hatch and egg so that sucks. Oh well. I don't really have much to say. I need to get up and figure out what I'm eating for dinner. I'm not really in the mood for the lettuce part of the taco salad! Hubby is sick so he's having soup so I would be eating lettuce alone and I hate lettuce. I can eat lettuce if I'm not eating it alone!

iFit Scottish Highland Series Lochan Coire Lagan Hike Part 3, Isle of Skye, Scotland Day 6

Today is Monday! It was time to go back to work. I wasn't sad about that since I actually like my job. My husband was not so excited to go back to work! He decided to get out of work an hour early which meant I was getting out an hour early since we carpool. As soon as we got home, I got up on the treadmill to do this walk that was supposed to be 2.1 miles, but I had to go slower so it was only 1.83 miles. There were parts of this where I was supposed to go 3MPH. That did not happen! I started out at 2.5MPH and bumped it up to 2.6MPH after I was past the only incline. I was close enough to the end that I thought the machine could handle it. I think the machine dies when I go downhill too fast because that means it's pushing me uphill. It's easier for me to walk downhill, but it's easier for the machine to go uphill since gravity isn't working against it. 

Okay, so this one wasn't physically challenging. At some point, I was a bit bored and my lower left back/hip area hurt so I really didn't want to finish this, but I kept at it and got through it. There isn't much to say. Graham McTavish was the leader again. He rattled on about a couple of plays that he did. One of them he wrote and it was about Vincent Van Gogh. Since I didn't want to die during this walk, I could actually pay attention. Hubby didn't have the TV on either, so I didn't have a split focus. It was interesting enough, but since I didn't have that split focus, I started at the time pretty much the entire walk. 

So the screenshot below is the one for what I did. The one below that is what it was supposed to be. I can do 3MPH for about three minutes. After that it's a big fat No!

I hatched a Pokemon Go egg. It was a Tepig which is getting kinda old, but I only have 58 candy and I need 125 so I'm not going to complain. I also got enough kilometers to get my next round of battle entries. I have 5663 steps for the day so I get 50 points on Engage for Health. I should have had more steps, but I don't carry my phone while I walk around at work. 

Alrighty! Time to go sit on the couch and do nothing for the rest of the night. 

iFit Scottish Highland Series, Lochan Coire Lagan Hike Part 1, The Highlands, Scotland Day 4

Today is Tuesday. I got up at 4:00 am for some calls and then went to work all day. When we came home, I got up on the treadmill and got this one done! It was day four and I did the day four walk! Woot woot! This was supposed to be about 469 feet and we were supposed to go fast. I knew that I was not going to make it through this if I didn't slow down the pace and I really wanted to make it through this one. It's my fourth day and I hadn't gotten through any of the previous ones properly. The first one I had to kill the incline and then it did. The second one, I had to kill the incline, but it didn't die. The third one I didn't make any changes to it, but it still died. I wanted to get through one of them without anything dying. I started out at 2.0 and then went down to 1.8 and a little more 2.0 and then at some point I was down to 1.5. I never went below 1.5.

My hamstrings pretty much hated life, but I was going slow enough that I could breathe. I actually felt like I was going to slow. I felt like I wasn't pushing myself, but I didn't want to push too hard and then not make it through the end, so I just kept it at 1.5 for the hard parts. I got through it. I lost about 120 feet in elevation and turned a 1.1 mile hike into a .8 mile hike, but I don't care. I got through this thing! I'm happy. I'm also not hacking my lungs up, so I'm pretty sure I should increase the speed a touch for tomorrow if it's a similar elevation scheme and distance, but I haven't looked ahead yet, so I'm not sure.

For this walk, he mainly talked about filming a scene in The Hobbit. It was the scene in the water with the barrels. I'm not sure which movie it was, but I remember the scene. He was entertaining in his storytelling. This was the first one where we weren't watching TV too so I could actually hear him. I turned up the volume and my husband got to listen too. He loves the moves and knows which character this guy played. It was entertaining enough. We shall see what tomorrow brings! It's AGT night so I can't type for much longer. I included my walk below and what it was supposed to be with the speed. He's insane if he thinks I'm going to walk that dang fast on this! Nope not happening. He mentioned people starting slow and eventually running it. Nope! Not going to happen!

I hatched two Pokemon Go eggs before I got on the treadmill, so I won't have many eggs hatching after. The ones I got before were an Absol and a Shinx. After the walk, I got a Patrat. I wish I had remembered to pull up my phone while I was walking so I could have loaded something else into the egg cooker since I had less than a third to go on that egg. Oh well. I was busy trying not to fall off the machine! Have a great day/night whatever it might be!

iFit Scottish Highland Series Beinn Alligin Hike Part 3 The Highlands, Scottland Day 3

Today is Monday! It's also President's Day. Hubby had the day off, but I didn't. I woke up at 4:00 AM to make some phone calls for my side hustle. Then I took a shower and headed to work. I left early though since I had an orthodontist appointment and I had to pick up my contacts. I will now be slightly less stressed over my contacts since I now have plenty of back up pairs. It's rather stressful only having one pair of contacts that are your current prescription. What if one falls down the drain or it pops out at work and you can't find it? UGH! So the ortho appointment went well. They are going to take my braces off next week and for some reason the guy who had given up hope that my tooth would ever come down has now decided he thinks it might come down. Alrighty then. 

I got home around 3:30 or so and hopped on the treadmill. This was the third walk in the series and this is day 3 of my attempt to get through the series. Three days in and I'm still on track with the series. 

Okay, so I learned yesterday that I can adjust the speed and the machine will still follow the elevation changes.  This new knowledge made me a very happy person since some of these walks in this series are way too fast for me. This one for example! He has this thing at 2.9MPH to start. It goes up and down a bit from there depending on the hills. I can't do a sustained 2.9MPH. No way, no how, not happening! I'll get there eventually maybe. I think when we walk in the forest I can do that speed if I'm a downhill, but on a treadmill, it's just too hard on my shins and I just can't do it! 

Okay, so I started at 2.5 and then went to 2.6 after a minute or so. The elevation changes actually worked which was awesome! I still can't believe I didn't know about this! Anyway....... I was doing okay. My calves were a bit tight, but I did some killer hills two days in a row even if I didn't finish either one. So I decided that with 15 minutes to go, I was going to pop it up to 2.7MPH. I regretted the decision before I got to the 2.7MPH, but I still bumped it up. I knew it was going to be super hard to make it through the rest at 2.7MPH, but I kept it there. I would not let myself change it. I did my less than 15 minutes, less than 14 minutes, less than 13 minutes, less than 12 minutes countdown. I never made it to less than 11 minutes because the machine died on its own. I thought I was doing well keeping myself up close to the front of the machine, but it died so maybe it's not the placement on the machine. Maybe it just doesn't like to go downhill for sustained periods of time. This will need more experimenting. I think I'll try to do this one at the end of the series and do it with 2.6 the whole time instead of bumping up to 2.7. Not sure I'll be in the mood to listen to him rattle on though. I'm not in love with this guy as a leader. He talks about old stories which I guess is fine and I think something I actually wanted at some point in the other two walks, but his stories annoy me. Maybe it's his voice. I just don't know. It was funny to be doing this walk while my husband watched one of the Lord of the Rings movies. The guy in the video was in The Hobbit so it's the same family of movies. 

I only went a mile on this hike instead of the 1.6 I was supposed to go. I'm pretty bummed about that. Oh well. I can't change it now.

I hatched Pokemon Go eggs! The first was a burmy which is kinda blah other than I needed the candy so I can finish doing the evolves that I need still. I also hatched a piplup which is also rather blah, but I'm low on candy so I guess that's helpful. The third egg was a Minccino which I have oodles of and I have plenty of candy at this point. I thought this was just a one day thing, but maybe I had extra eggs I picked up that day and I don't remember them. If I had been able to finish this walk, I think I would have hatched two more eggs! I'm even more bummed about that little factoid. I only need 2 more candy to evolve my Riolu! I think he found a candy during this walk. 

Tomorrow is a little over a mile and there isn't much elevation. I'll have to adjust the speed again though. No way I'll be doing that one at 2.9. I just realized that I said there isn't much elevation, but yet there's 469 feet of elevation. The layout of the walk is very deceptive. I might just put it on 2MPH and see what happens. 

My attempt

What should have happened