iFit Southern Utah Walking Mini Series Day 6 Coral Pink Sand Dunes Endurance Walk Kanab, Utah

Today was the last hike in this series of Southern Utah Walking Mini Series from iFit with Zac Marion. I was kind of dreading this one since there were three minute pushes with only 90 seconds of rest, but it actually went okay. My room got super hot this morning though and I was pretty miserable. I kinda got a headache and wanted to puke, but I powered through. 

Not sure if you've noticed yet, but the whole grid didn't show up because the tablet rebooted while I was walking. That sucked. You lose all of your tracking when that happens as far as the grid goes, but it still tracks your time and possibly elevation totals. The reboot does make it so you have to walk longer so my first push of 3 minute was more like 5 minutes because it takes it about 2 minutes to reboot and get you back into the walk. I hate it when that happens. I was running late too so that really sucked. 

The walk was through sand dunes. It was as interesting as sand dunes can be. I have to admit that I was pretty miserable during the hike so I didn't listen to most of what he said. He did point out some animal tracks and talk about our fitness journeys. He said he lost 100 pounds at some point. I liked this series and will look for more by the same guy. Tomorrow is a 10 minute stretch. I have iFit on my phone and my tablet now so I can watch the ones where no machine is needed. I don't really have a whole lot to say. I have the next 10 days off of work though so maybe I'll have more to say over the next week! 

Part of my hike 

What it should have been 

iFit Southern Utah Walking Mini Series Day 5 Red Hollow Slot Canyon Speed Play Hike Orderville, Utah

I woke up before the alarm today which is unusual, but I just procrastinated getting on the treadmill so I didn't get on it any earlier and I still had to rush to get ready for work after. It's a good thing that I work from home so my commute is from the couch to the same room as the treadmill since that's where my desk is. I'm crammed into the corner. I have my work computer, my personal computer, my treadmill and my weight bench all in one rather small bedroom. The weight bench is getting used as a shelf at the moment, but at least I'm using the treadmill. 

I almost didn't have my heart rate monitor on for this one, but I realized it before I got started and I'm glad because I really do like to see the heart rate graph. I like to see how quickly it comes down after the exertion. 

This was another interval walk, but it was different. The first three intervals were 30 seconds work and 30 seconds rest. The work was supposed to be hard work which was 2.8 mph instead of 2.2 mph. After that, we did two minutes of medium work which was 2.5mph and then 60 seconds of rest which was 2.2 mph. There were some speed adjustments around the elevation changes so during one of the medium work intervals, we went faster than 2.5mph since the elevation was doing down and one of them we went slower since the elevation was going up. Overall, I like the concept of the intervals, but for some reason, this walk really worse me out. My calves were getting sore and I was just tired. I didn't want to keep walking and was so ready for it to be over. 

Oddly enough, my pelvis didn't seem to hurt as much for this work and instead of the pain feeling like it was the base of my spine, it was further out from my spine. My lower back seems to be cracking more on it's own too so maybe the muscles are loosening up and letting the bones move around a bit. I'm not really sure. I just know that I'm thrilled any time there is less pain. 

This was another walk through a slot canyon, but this one was way narrower than the previous one. It also had places where he had to climb up on some big boulders. There was even one section with a rope for him to climb the wall. He likes to talk about how the slot canyons are formed similar to how fitness is formed. It takes consistent work over time. There's only one more walk in this series and then it's a stretch thing. I'm not really looking forward to tomorrow. It's 3 minutes of work and 90 seconds of rest. I'll get through it, but I don't think I'll be happy about it. 

Doing these interval walks has given me some ideas on how to incorporate this into some of my other walks though. The slide show type walks are a bit boring since I control the speed so I can go as slow or as fast as I want. There are no trainers too so no one talking to distract me. I'm thinking of getting an interval timer app for my phone or an actual timer to sit on the treadmill and then I can do my own intervals. It might help with the boredom of some of the really flat walks that have nothing going on to keep my mind off of the walking. Alright, I'm going to call it a day and wrap this up. 

My hike

 

What it should have been

iFit Southern Utah Walking Mini Series Day 4 Vortex Interval Hike St. George

Today was day four of the series and I did the day four walk on day four. That's pretty shocking for me! Woot woot! I slept horribly last night. I did not want to get out of bed and I did not want to get on the treadmill, but I did it. I committed to this treadmill thing since I quit my second job and I need to be on that treadmill on work days. I can slack off on the weekend, but work days need to be treadmill days! 

This was another interval walk, but he was mean in this one. We started off pretty easy with 2.2mph, but we bumped it up to 2.5 or 2.6 I forget which for the first two intervals. Those were a minute long with 30 seconds of rest. Then we did harder intervals with shorter rest so we went up to 2.8mph for 30 seconds and 2.2 for 30 seconds of rest. We did that for a bit and then the speed was less when we were going up hill, but as you can see from the heart rate monitor, going slower up the hill didn't really offset the work. My heart was pumping during those hills. I was so ready to be done with this one when it was over. 

I was able to keep up with him so I was happy about that, but I did hold onto the bars. One day maybe I'll be able to let go. I hear Jillian from Biggest Loser yelling at me to let go, but my back is just too messed up for me to let go yet. I'd have to walk way slower in order to let go and it would still hurt like hell. Today my bad didn't hurt as bad as it has for the last week or so. I was happy about that. It still hurt, but just not as much. It was mainly on the left side. 

This walk was through some desert treed area. It was interesting. At the top of it there was this thing called a vortex. The wind swirls around up there and had created a big whole in the top of the rock. If you filled it with water, you could swim in there. It was interesting, but he made it seem like it was more amazing than it looked on the screen. It's only a 10" tablet though. I don't have the 24" TV screen. That would have pretty much doubled the price of the treadmill and I wasn't going to do that. 

The grid shows that I only did 138 feet instead of the 142 that I was supposed to do. I'll never understand how that happens when I stayed on his pace, but whatever. I've got two more work days this week and two more walks in this series. The last one in the series is a stretching routine. I'm not really sure how that's going to go since I only know how to play this from the treadmill. I might need to learn if I can play this on my iPad. 

Time to go pick up the mail! 

My walk

This is what it should have been 

iFit Southern Utah Walking Mini Series Day 3 Snow Canyon Interval Hike St. George Utah

So this was Day 2 of the plan, but I did the wrong one yesterday. I know that's pretty shocking for me to do the wrong one. As long as I do the right one tomorrow, I should be back on track. Odds are high that won't happen. This weekend, I cleaned out a closet and found my heart rate monitor that came with the treadmill and I also found the heart rate monitor that came with my Polar M400 watch. They both work. I bought some replacement batteries after thinking the battery was dead on my husband's heart rate monitor. I don't think it was dead now. Oh well. I think it had just been so long since they had been used that things were wonky. I had to delete the pairing on my monitor and then repair it. Now it works. However, I did not use that one for this walk. I used the one with the treadmill so the heart rate would show on the same grid as the speed and elevation. 

I'm so excited to have my heart rate monitor back! So this was an interval walk, but he referred to it as endurance. The last interval walk was 30 seconds of work and 90 days of rest. This was one minute of work and one minute of rest. The rest was about 2.2 MPH and the work was 2.5 MPH. I like this guy. He does workouts that I can actually do. These are fun since we increase the pace and decrease the pace plus there was some elevation and some decline as well. I really wish that I had time to do these posts right after doing the walks so I could remember the stuff the trainers talked about. Maybe I should keep notes next time. I like this guy and I like that he talks about things relevant to walking and getting in shape. I did one series with Graham McTavish. He's an actor who was in Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit. He talked a little bit about the area and he talked a lot about his acting career. I also did a series in the Easter Islands. He talked a lot about the area we were walking. I liked the series since it did provide some education and some good scenery, but I really like in this one that the trainer talks about fitness and gives tips on posture and motivation. 

The trainer has a very mellow tone and demeanor. He doesn't get all hyped up and annoying. I will look for more with this trainer in the future. I really like that these are doable for me. So many of them have the speed set so high that I can't keep up. This would be a hard one to do with the intervals if I had to control the speed myself. I could do it though since he does give a 3 second countdown going into the interval and coming out of it so I could just bump the speed up or down as I see fit while he's doing the 3, 2, 1 countdown. I just prefer to not have to control the speed and/or elevation on the hikes. I don't have enough brain capacity to do that while on the treadmill and it would be really easy to just decide to skip that interval.

My left pelvis hurt when I got off the treadmill, but my right wasn't too bad. My calves and shins were a little sore while I was walking. I held onto the bars the whole time. I really need to stop holding the bars, but it really kills my back if I don't hold on. I bought an acupressure mat that should be here in about a week to two weeks. I'm hoping that it's the miracle cure I need for this back pain. It's really getting old. If not, I might go to the regular doctor and get an x-ray of my hips/pelvis to see if there's something going on in there. 

The chart for my walk is below. This was supposed to have a couple more feet in elevation and a little bit more in mileage. I'm not sure why it doesn't match if I'm not changing things, but that's how it seems to go. I can't really notice a difference in the heart rate for the intervals. It was pretty much a slow progressive increase until the one hill which has a bump up and then my heart rate comes down. I think there just wasn't enough of a difference in the interval speed vs the rest speed. The other option is that I'm so out of shape that my heart rate just doesn't come down fast enough on the rest periods to show a difference. When I was working out hard core way back a few years go, I did get to the point where I could really see my heart getting healthier since my heart rate would slow down faster than it had previously. I'll get there slowly but surely. Alright that's it for today! I'll see what tomorrow brings. 

My hike

What it should have been 

iFit Southern Utah Walking Mini Series Day 1 Turtle Wall Interval Walk St. George, Utah

 I finished the Montana hiking mini series, so it was time to start something new. I'm still trying to take it relatively easy while I adjust to this one job thing and walking on the treadmill every day. I picked the Southern Utah Walking Mini Series. It seemed similar to the one I had just done and looked easy enough. 

This was the first day of the series and I managed to do the correct walk. I often mess that up. The trainer for this one was pretty low key. He was very calming. He termed this an interval walk. We were supposed to do 30 seconds of work followed by a minute of rest. The work was either going faster or going uphill. I liked this since I was able to test myself with small bursts of speed and I wasn't committing to going faster for the whole walk. I also really liked that I was able to keep up with his speed and elevations. I did not have to adjust the speed at all. It's pretty rare that I can say that for an iFit walk. They usually go super fast. I usually can't breathe at that speed for the elevations, my shins will start to hurt or my legs/feet fall asleep. 

I didn't find this walk to be particularly difficult. He wanted us to be around 7 to 8 on the perceived exertion rating when we did the speed bursts, but I don't think I got that high at the speeds he did. I didn't push it to a faster speed though since I wanted to just follow his workout and I wanted something less strenuous than a 7 to 8 anyway. 

The scenery was nice for this one. Utah is a pretty place. He saw a small lizard and started to mess with it like he was going to catch it and then he decided to leave it alone. Later on he talked about how important it is to leave the turtles alone if you see them when you're there. I'm thinking okay so it's okay to terrorize a lizard, but not a turtle. Interesting. I did this walk on Thursday and I honestly don't remember much more about it other than my pelvis hurt since it always hurts on the treadmill. Even though I did the walk without any changes, I still lost 4 feet in elevation and .85 miles instead of .9 miles. I'm not sure how that happens, but oh well. 

Oh! I haven't talked about the new features with the treadmill! I've always found it highly annoying that you can't listen to it with headphones. There is a jack where you can import sound INTO the machine to play through the speakers, but there isn't a headphone port to use to listen to the workouts through headphones and there wasn't a Bluetooth option. You can do Bluetooth heart rate monitor, but not headphones. I used to use the treadmill in the living room while hubby was watching TV so it was always a struggle on what walks to do since I didn't want to do the video ones while he was watching TV. Those days are OVER! They not have it so you can connect Bluetooth headphones! Speaking of which, I need to charge mine. Anyway, I had some struggles with this walk with the headphones. They didn't connect right away. I missed some of the talking. Oh and I can't remember the trainer's name either. 

The other feature is cool too. They have a pop station that plays music in the background. I actually have the volume on the music turned off because I find it distracting while doing the video workouts since I want to be able to hear the trainers, but it's nice during the slideshow type workouts. Well, I think it will be nice. I actually use YouTube on my Roku Stick on my little TV in the workout room when I do the slideshow workouts. I'm totally rambling now so I'm going to wrap this up. I liked the workout. It felt good to stay on pace with the trainer. 

My Hike

What it was supposed to be