iFit 2 Mile Challenge Wroclaw, Poland

 I did this on Tuesday and today is Friday! This was the last of the 2 mile challenge walks that I can do. The one that is left is crazy incline. I wish the machine had a setting to override the incline trainer settings and make it just do treadmill settings so the max incline would be 15%. I might be able to do the last walk on a treadmill, but not on an incline trainer that goes to 40% incline! The thing is up to 40% for WAY waay waaaaaaaaaay too long. I'd die. Okay back to this walk. It was easy enough. It felt good. I'm glad I had a nice easy one as my last one of these 2 miles. The plan after finishing these was to move to a shorter video walk and work on not using my hands. Nothing went numb on this walk and nothing really hurt. I got through it. Yay! No more 2 mile walks for awhile. 

My Walk

iFit 2 Mile Challenge Mount Iwaki, Japan

 This was done on Monday and today is Friday so it's going to be another short post since I don't remember a whole lot. This was set up to be a negative 6% incline the entire way, but I set it to negative 3% until it felt like the machine was angry and then negative 2% hoping that it wouldn't die on me since it doesn't like me doing negative 6% for too long. It likes to overheat and die. The scenery was boring. The walk was boring. Nothing went number or hurt too badly and I held onto the bars the whole time even going downhill. I'm going to work on that! 

My Walk

iFit 2 Mile Challenge Tomies Wood, Ireland

Today is Friday. I did this walk on Sunday. I wasn't really in the mood for a walk, but felt like it needed to be done. I wanted to get all the 2 mile walks done. I honestly don't remember much of this walk and the machine rebooted while I was on it so I lost all of the graph stuff for the bulk of the walk. I do know that nothing went numb and I wasn't in any pain other than a twinge in my right pelvis area. I don't really have all that much to say about this walk. This had a lot of downhill stuff. If there was a big section of negative 6%, I put it on negative 3% since I didn't want the machine to die on me and it hates when I walk downhill since it's pushing me uphill. 

My Walk

What it was supposed to be 

iFit 2 Mile Challenge Grand Canyon, Arizona

Today is Saturday. I did this walk yesterday. I'm getting low on my two mile challenge walks. This is one that I had actually decided not to do since it said it was over 900 feet in elevation. When I looked at the grid, it looked super scary with a big giant hill at the end. After I really looked at it and focused on the numbers, I realized this wasn't all that scary. The thing says it goes up to like 25% incline, but those are just spikes. When there are spikes like that, you never actually get up to that 25% unless you're going super super slow, but at a 2.5 MPH pace, I was guessing I wouldn't get to more than half of that spike. 

Yesterday was a bit of a busy day and it snowed too. We had to drop off the recycling and my work computer and go to my chiropractor appointment and  my husband's endochronology appointment. It was also garbage day so the garbage can needed to be out, but I actually got that out on Thursday night. I tried to put it out Wednesday night, but my husband realized what I was doing and he stopped me. 

We drove about 25 mph on a road with a 65 mph limit. We were in a long string of cars behind the snow plows. We made it to 45 once the snow plows pulled into the weigh station. It was a rather scary drive since people were way too bunched up. Seriously people, just leave more distance. Being right on top of the car in front of you is not going to get you there any faster and it could actually slow things down if it causes a multi car pile up. It's just not a good plan. I am pretty much scared to death of this drive in the snow. I didn't want to move to this town due to this road being between us and the next biggest town where all of the shopping and doctors are. We did it though. I'm happy we both work from home so we don't have to take this road in snow very often. I would have canceled my chiropractor appointment, but hubby needed to go to his appointment. 

Okay so the walk almost didn't happen. I had set the alarm to go off at 7:00 so I could walk before we went to the appointments. The alarm went off and I just didn't want to get up, so I didn't. After we got back, hubby had to work so I worked on catching up on blog posts, but didn't really have any desire to walk. After doing the posts, I realized that I really did need to get up there and get walking. I think I was more curious about if my back would hurt or not than anything else as far as motivation. I got up there and had limited choices. I had this one that I had said I wouldn't do. I had one that there's no way I can do and then three that were just sort of ho hum when I looked at them. One of which is all downhill. I picked this one to try to challenge myself a bit with some incline since I haven't had much incline lately.

The machine does not like me going fast on the decline and it doesn't like me staying at 6% decline for long periods of time. It will just die. I'm pretty sure it's because I'm over the weight limit of the machine and on the decline, it has to push me up the hill instead of gravity pulling me down. This thing had a huge 6% decline section, so I just set it to 3%. There were a couple parts where I left it go back to the 6% as it led into the incline sections so I didn't miss the transition to the incline. My shoulders were killing me since I lean into the top of the machine and have to use my arms to hold me up. I need to work on this, but for now this is what it is. 

I started out at 2.5 MPH, but was planning on going down as I got to the hills, but then I realized the hills weren't very challenging so I just kept the 2.5 MPH. I was kinda surprised that I was able to do the last hill section at 2.5 MPH, but it was really only about five minutes of work at the end. I figured I could fight through 5 minutes if I knew it was over once that five minutes of work was over. I survived and nothing went numb on the walk. My right pelvis area was a bit tender which actually surprised me since it hasn't been bad over the last week. Maybe it was because I had just been to the chiro that morning. I'm not sure. There isn't much left to say and hopefully breakfast will be ready soon. There certainly was not over 900 feet of elevation, so I'm thinking the 900 feet is the low point of the walk to the high point, but since my treadmill only goes to negative 6% instead of the crazy low decline they had listed I guess I didn't have as much of an elevation gain as they would have though. I guess I need to look harder at some of these walks that I ignore because the elevation gain seems so scary. 

My Walk

What the website shows 

iFit 2 Mile Challenge More OG Romsdal, Norway

 Today is Sunday. I did this walk this morning. We were supposed to go for a walk outside, but hubby had some pain in his upper back so he wasn't up for a walk. I picked this one because it looked relatively easy and he wasn't sure if he would want to go for a walk later in the day. I didn't want to wear myself out. I started this walk a different day, but didn't finish it since the machine died. Because of that, I started out at 2.5 MPH since the machine doesn't like e going downhill. Once all the downhill stuff was done, I bumped it up to 2.6 MPH. I thought about going to 2.7, but I stayed with 2.6. 

I felt pretty good for this one. My shoulders don't like the downhill stuff since I hope on. I'm such a wimp. I even hold on for the downhill stuff. I really need to start working on some shorter slower walks and practice not holding on. It usually results in my back hurting worse though. Since my back is getting a lot better, maybe I'll practice hands free soon. 

There was only a small section of uphill and the rest was either flat or downhill. I liked this one. My feet didn't go number. My right pelvis hurt a little bit. It's not so much pain really, but more discomfort. I had a couple instances of something weird in my right calf and shin. It wasn't pain, but it's the same spot that was painful in other walks. It was more like a short period of numbness. I'm a train wreck what can I say. 

I realized something recently. The grid on the website will show a steeper decline than my machine allows. This could explain why my elevations haven't been matching. 

This walk was a bit weird since it was on the road. I don't really like it when the slideshows are on the road and I'm walking past semi trucks. There was a giant bridge too. The bridge was interesting, but it's freaky looking down and seeing traffic. I don't really look at the slide shows all that much anymore. I tend to just watch the YouTube videos. I like these so they change the machine elevation for me, but the slide shows are rather boring and often times they are in unattractive areas. I prefer the video ones with the trainers. I like having my own room for the treadmill now so I can do the video walks without having to keep the volume low so hubby can still watch TV. I only have five or six of these 2 mile walks left and two of them aren't thinks that I can do yet, so I'm almost done with what I can do! Woot Woot! They have a 2.5 Mile Challenge, but I'm not sure if I'll do that just yet since I want to go back and work on not holding on.

My Walk

What's on the website 

iFIt 2 Mile Challenge Phakding, Nepal

 Today is Saturday. I didn't walk for the last two days. Thursday, I was tired and cranky and I just didn't want to walk. It wasn't the walking that was the issue. It was more the waking up part that was a real issue for me. I also hadn't picked a new workout challenge and no way was I doing two miles that day before work. Friday, was a busy day with appointments and shopping. We had planned on going for a walk after my chiropractor appointment, but we decided to go to Cotsco instead. Once we got to Costco and saw the parking lot, we decided that was a horrible idea and went to Safeway instead. That was a horrible idea too. The place was packed. So much for operating at reduced occupancy and social distancing. There were times where I just had to stand in one place long enough for someone to move. I was about to start screaming at people. 

We were planning on going for a walk today, but we woke up late and breakfast took awhile and blah blah blah. Hubby didn't feel like going so I got on the treadmill and did this one. It was pretty easy and actually felt pretty good. I still felt something going on in my pelvis, but my feet felt great. My shins and calves felt great. My shoulders got a little tender during some of the longer stretches of 6% decline, but I survived. Since the machine doesn't like me going downhill, I kept it at 2.5 mph. The weirdo glitch happened again and it shows I was only at 1 mph though. I even did the trick where I up it and then put it back down, but I guess the timing didn't work.

After the two hills, there was a huge stretch of downhill and a long section of that was 6% so I put it at negative 2% in an attempt to keep the machine happy. I hit the speed button in error so there's a little spike of speed then it came back down to 2.5 in the grid. It actually shows 2.5 too. Just before the end, I hit to follow the workout again so I did a little bit of the 6% decline before popping back up again.

Overall, this was a good walk for me. I wasn't too terribly bored since I was watching Eric Church videos on YouTube. The slide show on the screen was a bit boring. The walk itself was easy enough and I felt good. Maybe a couple days of rest is what I needed! Maybe I'll make Thursdays my rest day. I really shouldn't take a weekend day as a rest day since I force myself to do longer walks on the weekends and allow myself to slack off a bit on the week days and blame it on not having enough time before work. I only have four of five 2 mile walks left. One of them is so not going to happen. The thing is like 40% incline for a huge portion of the walk. At least that's what the grid shows. One of them has a long downhill so the machine will probably hate that. One of them has a big downhill section followed by a big uphill section. We'll see how that one goes. If we don't go for a walk outside tomorrow, I might try to do two walks. We shall see. 

I picked my next program I want to do, but they might be too long for me to do before work. It's perfect though because there are four of them and I have four workdays. I'll let you know how it goes. 

My walk 

What it should have been 

iFit 2 Mile Challenge Kampong Thom, Cambodia

Today is Monday and I did this walk this morning. It's a workday so it should have been a short walk, but my husband set the alarm for 5:10 so he could get up and get on the treadmill. He opted to reset the alarm until 6:30. I had the choice of getting up, waiting until 6:30 or setting my own alarm for 5:45. I opted to just get up and get a 2 mile hike in. I'm not sure if that was a good decision or not I felt off kilter all day, but whatever. It is what it is and I got more calories burned. 

This was a very flat and very boring walk. It took a lot of mental fortitude to keep going just out of sheer boredom even with the YouTube videos. I tend to like a mental distraction like changes in elevation or changes in speed, but I didn't want to mess with the whole shin situation. If I did speed intervals, would my shin hurt? Who knows. I don't know since I didn't do it. I did go at 2.6 MPH just to see how things went. No shin pain. No calf pain. My right hamstring was a little tender which I found a bit odd, but whatever. It is what it is. My feet didn't go numb so that was another good thing. I wore the same leggings as yesterday since I did the wash after my workout. I also got to wear my Fabletics socks. I really like those. They are like magic gloves that are tiny, but stretch when you put your hands in them. They are amazing. Super thing too. 

My Hike

iFit 2 Mile Challenge Sletta, Norway

Today is Monday, but I did this walk on Sunday. It was a non-working day so I had to get my two miles in. This one looked pretty low key so I went for it. I wanted to do something relatively easy. It turned out to be pretty easy going at 2.5 MPH. My pelvis on the right side hurt a little, but my feet didn't go numb and my calf didn't really hurt. Overall, it was an uneventful experience. I watched YouTube videos and I walked. I got to wear the last pair of my new leggings. I liked them. They were from Fabletics. They are one of the few places that I have found that have 4x leggings and they seem to fit well so far. I got them super cheap on some clearance sale. They are white and black and they look hideous on me since I should not wear white, but they have an external side pocket on both sides so that's a plus for sure. I feel like my heart rate shouldn't have been as high as it was, but it is what it is and I can't go back and fix whatever I've done now.  

My hike 

iFIt 2 Mile Challenge Rhodes, Greece

Today is Saturday and I did this walk this morning! I like it when I get to write about it the same day that I actually do the walk. There is definitely something wrong with iFit and it's driving me insane. The grid for the walk shows that I did this at 1 MPH. I did it at 2.5 MPH. The top part says my pace was a 24 minute mile and my total 2 mile walk was 48 minutes and 6 seconds so obviously I didn't do this at 1 MPH! Why is it doing this! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I thought about flipping the speed at the beginning, but I flipped it to 2.5 and it put me back to 1 MPH and then I flipped it back to 2.5 so I thought I was covered. Clearly I wasn't. Grrrrrrrr. Can you tell I'm highly annoyed over this? It doesn't help that I'm currently annoyed with my husband too so I'm angry typing. 

Let's start last weekend when he had some chest pains and some left arm pain and after shoveling snow. I asked if he was having a heart attack, he kinda blew me off and said he was fine. Fast forward to Tuesday and someone at work decides to tell him he should get checked out. He sent a message to his doctor to get seen and they tell him to go see the ED so we went and he ended up getting admitted for observation overnight and had a bunch of tests and missed two days of work to find out there's nothing wrong with his heart, but all of his other issues are out of whack. So anyway, it snowed Thursday night. Friday I went out to take the garbage out and fell down on the slick ice under the snow. I knew there was ice under there. I was walking so slowly too, but with the garbage can it just let me off kilter and I went down. I almost went down a couple more times. Anyway, I said it was super slick out there and I was going to use my Yak Tracks to go out and shovel. I told him we only had one pair so only one of us could do it and I didn't want him doing it since he had just been in the hospital. I never made it out there.

Today, I got on the treadmill because I had forgotten I was going to shovel. Then I was all sweaty and gross so I took a shower. While I was in the shower, he came into the bathroom to get his pants out of the master closet. I have no idea why our master closet is in our bathroom, but whatever. It is. He wouldn't say why he needed his pants. I'm not stupid. He decided to go out and shovel. That left me unable to actually enjoy my shower because now I need to race through it to be available and dressed if anything happens and it also leaves me with a soaking wet head so it's not like I can go outside and help shovel. Oh and he didn't bring his phone out there either so if he fell, I guess I'd find out eventually when I hear the shoveling stop for too long. Lovely plan here. I'm sitting in my office writing this since I'm closer to the driveway and I can hear him shoveling. It sounds like he might be coming in. I hear the garage door now. 

Okay so the walk..........I wore my new Fabletics leggings that have the pocket at the small of the back and I wore my new Fabletic socks. The socks are super thin and I kinda liked them. The leggings were a nice fabric. They were full length so it was a bit weird for me since my other ones are capri and crop. They came up all the way in the crotch though so that was nice because then there is no skin friction while I walk like there is with one of the other pairs of leggings that I have. 

I wanted to do a 2 mile walk since it's not a work day. I also wanted to do one that was relatively flat and I was going to take it relatively slowly. I went 2.5 MPH and the walk never went above 5.5% incline. There was some downhill as well which was nice. Nothing went numb during this walk. It was very nice! The only pain I had was in my right pelvis area. I think the chiropractor calls it my illiac sacral joint or something like that. It wasn't too bad and it wasn't the whole walk either. There was no shin pain or calf pain. I was surprised that my shingles type pain didn't happen either. Oh and before the walk, my left quad was a little bit sore. I think from the fall yesterday, but that didn't hurt during this walk either. My heart rate got pretty high for a relatively flat walk going only 2.5MPH and I was definitely ready to be done with the walk by the time I was done mainly because of my heavy breathing and high heart rate. The rest of my could have kept going. Well, maybe my brain was ready to get off the treadmill so maybe not. I guess my point is that I wasn't to the point of exhaustion or pain. My lower back didn't hurt either. It wasn't too terribly annoying to have the phone at the small of my back. The leggings help it up pretty well. It was pretty sweaty when I was done though which was kinda gross. 

I don't remember the scenery for the walk. I think it was a path near the water. The slide show ones are a bit boring for me to watch so I usually just turn the TV onto a YouTube channel and pay attention to that. If I stare at the screen, I'll stare at the time and if I stare at the time, it makes me just want to get off the machine. With this one, I was counting up the time instead of down so I was focused on getting to 1/4, 1/3, 1/2, 2/3, 3/4 etc. I was 2/3 of the way into it and cheering the 32 minute mark. I flipped to check my heart rate and was like OMG! I only have 16 minutes left. I hadn't even been paying attention to the time left. That's some sort of a positive sign. I did have some problems with fractions though. I was thinking 32 minutes was 3/4 and not 2/3 and I knew that 36 minutes was some other milestone, but then if 32 minutes was 3/4, what the heck was 36 minutes? At some point, I realized 32 minutes was the 2/3 and 36 minutes was the 3/4. Overall, I'm quite happy with this walk. Now to convince myself to get back up on there tomorrow and to figure out what I'm going to do for Wednesday and Thursday. I still have two relatively short ones for Monday and Tuesday although, hubby wants to start walking outside before work since this whole hospital thing is a big wake up call. We shall see if we actually get outside. 5:30 is really early to motivate and go outside in the cold. 

My Hike

iFit 2 Mile Challenge Nanternis, United Kingdom

Today is Saturday. I did this walk today. I keep planning a rest day and then I don't rest because I want to experiment. Today, I used different shoes. I've been using my Hoka shoes. They have a rocker bottom. The orthopedic doctor suggested them after I broke my foot. They were my transition show after wearing the boot forever. I never really liked them, but I didn't want to toss them since they were expensive. They became my treadmill shoes. I've tried a lot of other things like loosening the laces, using hiking poles on the treadmill, going to the chiropractor, focusing on my foot placement and changing up my hand positions. I haven't had much success with any of this, so it was time to try changing the shoes. 

I picked this walk because there was some elevation in it so I was thinking it wouldn't have much downhill so I didn't think I would be risking the machine shutting down on me. Turns out this started with a 6% decline section, but it looked short enough that the machine wouldn't die. I focused on paying attention to if the machine was slipping. It wasn't, so I kept going. It felt really weird to have normal sneakers on while walking on the treadmill. I felt like I didn't even have any shoes on since the Hoka bottoms are so thick. After a bit, it actually felt good though. These shoes are wide shoes and I loosened up the laces. My feet felt so free. It was nice. I was optimistic. 

At the 22 minute mark, my feet hadn't fallen asleep so this was a good sign. At some point, my left foot started to go numb and then the left leg was going numb. My right foot went numb for a very brief period of time. My right leg hurt though. It felt like nerve pain coming from my right hip. My back didn't really hurt during this one. It was a bit strange. Overall, I don't think this was a failed experiment, but it wasn't the answer to all of my prayers either. I do think I need new shoes. I just don't think these shoes are the shoes to wear on the treadmill either. This could be fun trying to find the right pair. Ugh! I think breakfast is almost done so I need to go. 

My Walk

What the website shows 

iFit 2 Mile Challenge Sault Ste. Marie, ON, Canada

Today is Saturday, but I did this walk yesterday. I know that on Thursday when I wrote about doing The Arches National Park, Utah, I said that I was going to rest on Friday since I had done seven days in a row of 2 mile walks. I changed my mind because I had the brilliant idea that maybe my feet are going numb due to the position of my hands/arms on the bars so I decided to Google using hiking poles on a treadmill. It seems crazy and dangerous, but I figured someone has probably done it so I wanted to see how that went before trying it myself. I was able to find a couple videos on YouTube with people doing it so I decided to go out and search for the little rubber boots that go on the tips of our hiking poles. I could not find them, so I opened up the new package of poles that hubby got last year or the year before at Costco and then we never used them. They came with two sets of rubber covers. One set looks like a boot and the other looks like the bottom of a crutch. It's just a little rubber stopper with a flat bottom. 

I made sure to use the hand straps so I didn't drop the poles on the treadmill and kill myself. This was actually not the first walk I tried to use the poles. I started with one that had a lot of downhill at the beginning and the machine does not like it when I do too much downhill. It just stops. I should have known it was going to happen because I could feel the tread slipping forward, but I kept going. The machine died 10 minutes in. I was pretty bummed. I shut it down and then pouted in the other room. After about half an hour, I decided to give it another try with this one since it was pretty level. 

It was very awkward to try to hit the tread with the poles and I couldn't really get a good rhythm going. I was about to just give up on the whole thing, but then I had an epiphany. I set the rubber stoppers on the rails and just let them stationary. The goal with this was to get my hands and arms in a more natural position, but have the poles for balance since I don't do well without holding on since I feel like I'm going to fall off the machine. This method actually worked pretty well. I was able to swing my arms to some extent like I would normally do while walking. It was a bit annoying though that the poles kept moving slightly so they would randomly just fall off the side of the treadmill and throw me off balance. I felt like I had better posture this way, but it definitely made my body work more since the upper body was moving more than it normally would if I was just holding onto the treadmill bars. I wasn't going very fast and it was relatively flat, but I still felt rather worn out by the whole experience. My feet also still went numb around the 22 minute mark. I decided to keep with the poles even though my feet were asleep just to keep up the experiment. However, around the 35 minute mark, I was just too tired to keep up with the poles, so I tossed them aside and just held onto the machine. Then I sped up the machine a bit to get off.

This was an interesting experiment, but I'm not so sure I'm excited to try it again. The whole point was to see if I could find a way to be on the treadmill without my feet going numb. This was not the solution. The next experiment is to try it with different shoes.  

My Walk

What it shows it will be 

iFit 2 Mile Challenge Arches National Park, Utah

Today is Thursday. It's the last working day of my vacation. The next three days I would have had off anyway. It's a bit sad in a way. I've kind of enjoyed this time off even if I didn't really do anything monumental. I barely even left the house. It was still nice to read a book and get some stuff done. It was also nice getting on the treadmill for some 2 mile walks. 

Yesterday was chiropractor day. I was excited to get onto the treadmill to see if my feet would go numb. He said he did something different with my back  yesterday so I was hoping that it would help with the numb feet situation. I decided to take this walk fairly slow to start since there was elevation and I just wasn't in the mood for speed or huffing and puffing. I started 2MPH. I stayed there for the first hill section and then went up to 2.2. I stayed at 2.2 until it went to the downhill section and then went up to 2.4. I dropped down during the last hill. The slowest I went was 1.8 or 1.9. I forget which. I really hate big hills at the end. Oddly enough though, it really took my mind off of the time. I was so focused on watching the chart of the elevation so I knew when I'd be going down again! I started swearing at the machine on the last blip of 18%. I was telling it to start going down, but it wouldn't. I started to swear at it and it still wouldn't go down. Eventually I gave up and it went down. I didn't realize that it had another blip up though just at the end so as I was coming off the big hill, I went down to 10% or something close I think and then after a few seconds, it popped back up to 12% or something close to that. I was so not happy. I got through it though. 

To answer the question about will my feet still go numb, yup! My back didn't hurt all that bad though, but my feet certainly went numb. The chiropractor thinks it's nerve related and not circulation related since my feel will wake back up randomly or partially during the walk. They also come back pretty quickly after I'm back on level ground and slowing the walk down for the cool down. I'm starting to wonder if it has something to do with where my arms/hands are for the walks. Next week I might learn more about that since the goal next week is to walk slow and not hold the bars. We shall see how that goes. 

This walk had a decent sized section downhill. The downhill stuff is great for my breathing and helps the heart rate come down. However, it also kills my arms since I push on the bars to keep from falling into the machine. This is normally a good thing to me since it's like getting and arm/back workout too. However, this afternoon, I went to check the mail and decided that the driveway needed to be shoveled since it was covered in ice and I'm afraid that someone will fall while delivering me a UPS package. At our rental, I would have three feet of snow on the front step and not care, but here, I have nightmares about lawsuits. The driveway is a lot longer and we have a sidewalk. There wasn't a sidewalk at the rental. 

Anyway, I started off trying to clear the thing down to pavement, but it was killing me. I lasted maybe 10 to 15 minutes and then I needed a break. All that bending was not good for my back and all of that slamming the ice scraper into the ice was killing my arms. After a couple trips, I decided to just go for the top layer approach. I stayed upright and just used the scraper to take off the top layer and then I stood upright while I used the shovel like a snow plow and pushed all the ice chunks into the grass. I got done about five minutes before hubby was done with work so he got out of doing the entire driveway. With any luck, it won't just re-freeze tonight. I'm sure it will get to freezing though since it's like 36 degrees out right now. I hope that it will warm up enough to melt enough so we can get one more scrape going on it tomorrow and I'll just skip the treadmill tomorrow. :) After all the work I did out there today, I deserve a day off and I've gone a full seven days in a row with 2 mile walks on the treadmill. I'm ready for a break. Maybe I'll do the 10 minute stretching thing from Zac Marion from the Southern Utah Walking Mini Series. 

Oh! One thing I forgot to mention!!! Check out my heart rate! I think my recovery rate was pretty good with this one. Admittedly though, I did not get my heart rate up super high for a prolonged period of time, so it might not be a good test, but it looks pretty cool that it followed the hill line pretty well until I picked up the speed during the downhill section. I was happy. I hope I can walk tomorrow! OMG! The shoveling was such a bad idea. It's crazy though. Our driveway gets zero sun so if we get a tiny amount of snow like 1/2" like we did yesterday, it won't melt. It just turns to ice. It sucks. I see the people across the street with zero snow in their driveway and they didn't shovel. Even if I shovel, I still have ice! It sucks. Oh well. The exercise is good for me. 

My walk

 

What it should have been 

iFit 2 Mile Challenge Mt. Fuji Japan

Today is Wednesday. I did this walk this morning. I needed something with elevation so I could go slow since speed was out of the question after yesterday's walk in New Orleans, Louisiana. So I just learned something! I feel stupid now. For a few walks, I've been complaining that the elevation gain was way off from my elevations on my walks. I'm not sure where they are getting their elevation gain number, but the top of the bottom Mt. Fuji walk below has an elevation gain of over 800 feet, but I only show 311 feet of elevation gain for me. However, I moused over the elevation line at the bottom of the picture and the website shows 271 feet. I actually show more elevation than that. I'm utterly confused at this point, but I'm okay with it. This whole thing is confusing. 

This walk went pretty well. I started out 2.2 MPH and went down when I got to the hill. I think I went down to 1.9, but possibly 1.8 MPH. Once the big hill section was done, I sped up 2.5 to make up some time since I needed to be off the machine by 8:00 so I could get in the shower and go to my chiropractor appointment. I was so ready to have my neck and back cracked. They didn't crack very loud today and the part with the little jackhammer thing normally feels really good like I could lay there all day and have someone just move that all over my back. Today, it didn't feel so good on my lower back. I suppose that's a good thing because my back is less numb, but I kinda thing I'd like the numb back instead of the pain! 

After the chiro, I went to Michael's to look at Christmas decorations. I got a ceramic Santa cookie jar and a wreath hanger. Since I had $10 in Michael's rewards, I only paid $.80! I was super excited about that. My Christmas tree came with rewards. Those rewards were used on nutcrackers and what I spent that day, turned into this $10 certificate which got me more stuff! I think that's it now though. I don't think I'll end up with enough points to get another certificate, which is actually a good thing since they didn't really have much Christmas stuff left! I might need to get out there and shop sooner next year! Christmas will be a Saturday next year so maybe I'll just ditch the hubby and go into town to hit all the stores. Luckily for me, I took so long to get out there so one of my friends had already hit the big places and let me know where to skip! 

After Michael's, I sat in line at Chick Fil A for 30 minutes to get some waffle fries since I love them so much and rarely go due to the lines. At 10:30 AM, it took 30 minutes to get my food! OMG! The lines are crazy long there. No one around here goes to McDonald's or BK anymore. Since the Chick Fil A moved into down everyone goes there. There is a huge line no matter what time we drive by. This was actually the shortest line I have ever seen and it still took 30 minutes! The food isn't worth that kind of wait, but I really really wanted them. Live and learn. 

Oh I went to Cash and Carry before Michael's and then Walmart after Michael's. Then I went to a friend's house to pick up something her daughter had drawn for me. We chatted a bit and I drove home in the snow. I sat down long enough for lunch and then ended up cleaning the kitchen. I did all the counters and the floor and even the microwave. We really need a dog who will lick the floor clean if food falls. I have to sweep way too often around here. Okay time to go sit on the couch and read or watch Lucifer if I can get away with another night of it. 

My Walk

What it should have been 

iFit 2 Mile Challenge New Orleans, Louisiana

 Today is Wednesday, but I did this walk yesterday. I wanted something relatively flat so I could try doing 3 MPH 30 second intervals with 2.4 MPH 2 minute rests. I love playing with my Gym Boss Interval Timer App. This walk started out great. As soon as the walk started, it put me on 2 MPH. I bumped it up to 2.2 MPH fairly quickly. I wanted to see if changing the speed right away would help with the issue I was having with my previous two walks, Parque Pumalin, Chile and Cilgwyn, Wales. I know when I started those walks, I was at 2 MPH or higher and the grid shows that I was at 1 MPH. It seems to have worked since this one shows me going up to 2.2 MPH and then 2.4 MPH. 

The first 3.0 MPH interval felt great. My heart rate got a little elevated, but I wasn't dying and the interval seemed to go very quickly. The next one was okay too. Even the third one was good. I recovered well and felt great about this walk. The next interval sucked though and the one after that sucked worse. My right shin hurt sooooooo bad! I can work through a lot of pain. I've been walking with numb feet. I've been walking through all of this mess with my back and my pelvis. I walk through sore calves and hamstrings. I apparently have a low tolerance for shin pain. For some reason, shin pain is my breaking point. I seriously wanted to stop the walk. Instead, I went down to 2.8 MPH for one of the work intervals. That went okay, but by the end of the rest interval, my shin still hurt and there was no way I was going to do another speed round. I shut off my interval timer and just stayed at 2.4. The shin paid didn't go away! I just could not walk it off! 

I had about 25 minutes to go and I really wanted to just shut the machine off and call it good. I started ticking the speed down and down and down trying to make the pain stop. It sucked watching my time left go up and up and up! I had 25 minutes to go for like 8 minutes! Every time I got under 25 minutes and I ticked it down, I had to more time back on the clock. I was so devastated. The pain was just not going away and I didn't think I could finish the walk. It was finally bearable at 2.0 MPH. There were time where I just bent at the waist and leaned on the machine hoping to get some relief. I also locked my elbows and tried to hold as much of my weight with my arms as I could so my feet were moving, but not really holding my weight. This was seriously horrible. I kept hearing Jillian Michaels yelling at me. We used to watch The Biggest Loser and she had no tolerance for anyone who would put their hand or arms on the machine. I really need to work on that, but for now to get the speed up, I have to hold on. Next week, I'll be back at work and doing shorter walks so I plan on seeing how it goes with no hands at a slower speed since I'll be doing video walks and I can go slower without impacting the length of the walk. 

When I finally got under 20 minutes to go, I thought I could handle this. Things were going better for my shin. That's possibly because I think it ended up just going numb. My feet were numb too and my back didn't hurt too much. I was optimistic. Around 16 minutes to go, I wanted to give up again. It just hurt so dang much again. I fought through it and hit 15 minutes and then I knew I could get through it. I was pretty much counting the seconds until I could get off the machine, but I knew that I could fight through it. At some point, I decided the only way to get off the machine was to get through the 2 miles faster so I upped the speed a little bit and a little bit more and a little bit more until I was at 2.5 MPH. When I hit 3 minutes, I literally started the countdown 180 seconds, 175 seconds, 170 seconds! 

This walk kicked my butt! It was horrible! It has nothing to do with the layout of the walk, but it had everything to do with me thinking I could survive a two mile hike with 30 seconds of 3mph and 2 minutes of 2.4mph. I might have to try that again on a 1 mile hike or a 30 minute video walk. The first several intervals really did feel fine, but after enough of them, I just wanted off. Lessons learned. My shin even  hurt later that night. I was seriously concerned about what walk I was going to do the following day since I don't have very many 2 mile ones that have elevation. The only way to get me to walk slow intentionally is to give me elevation which forces me to go slow. 

My Walk 

What it was supposed to be

iFit 2 Mile Challenge Parque Pumalin, Chile

Today is Monday. It's the first work day of my vacation. Hubby is in his office working and I'm occupying my time. So far, I made breakfast, but that was super simple egg cooker eggs and toast for him. No toast for me since I'm out of bread. I walked on the treadmill and took a shower. I took the recycling to the recycling center. I went to Grocery Outlet to pick up celery and creamer, but they didn't have the right creamer flavor so I didn't get creamer, but I did get two new Christmas decorations. One of them was a gold glitter nutcracker and the other was hard to describe. It's a metal circle that looks like a reindeer and its legs are on skies. It only had two legs and they are on springs so it's like a bobble reindeer. It's pretty dang adorable. 

Okay so back on track for the walk. The elevation was a lot higher than the last few walks, so I decided to ditch the speed intervals and just let the elevation spikes create the extra work. Oddly enough, they were spaced out pretty consistently so it was almost like doing an interval thing. 

For the second day in a row, the grid below shows that I started at 1 MPH, but I started at 2.2 MPH. I'm not sure what's up with this. It did it for my Cilgwyn, Wales walk too. It's highly annoying and it's also not tracking all of my elevation. It shows that I got 360 feet of elevation, but it should have given me 517 feet of elevation. I'm going to reboot and see if that changes anything. 

This week kicked my butt! I was so tired when I was done. My feet were also numb. The wound on my leg didn't hurt too much though. I had my blue leggings today and those pull up higher in the crotch so I wasn't rubbing that same spot again like yesterday. 

My Hike

 

What it should have been 

iFit 2 Mile Challenge Cilgwyn, Wales

Today was Sunday. It was two days after Christmas. It was day three of my vacation. This was a forced vacation as part of the recovery efforts at work. They forced us to take a week for Christmas week or New Year's week. I took New Year's week so Christmas was my first day and it will go through a week from today. Since I don't have to work, I'm forcing myself to do 2 mile walks and I'm playing with my Gym Boss Interval Timer in the process. 

I picked this walk since it was supposed to be in the 300ish range for elevation gain, but according to the grid, I only did 193 feet which is odd. I also find it odd that it says I started this walk going 1 MPH, but I know I was doing 2.2 MPH. Not sure how that got wonky. Yesterday, I did the Marseille, France 2 Mile Walk from the same iFit 2 Mile challenge. I thought I was going to be super sore today since my right calf was killing me yesterday. I played around with my spikey laundry balls on my calf yesterday and it felt a bit better, but I still thought it would hurt today. It didn't do too badly. 

Since this hike had some elevation gain and since the one yesterday kinda kicked my ass, I decided to use 2 minutes of work and 1 minute of rest for the intervals and I started with 2.4 MPH for the work and 2.2 for the rest. I then bumped the work up to 2.5 and then 2.6. Once I got done with the downhill section, I went back to 2.5. I even did one at 2.4 again. I kept the rest ones at 2.2 MPH. There was a small incline section in the beginning and then a rather large hill at the end. I did 12 intervals, but I think I should have upped it to 13. I'll probably do that for future hikes. The last interval just ended too soon and I wasn't in the mood to reset it since I wanted to make sure I could survive the big hill at the end. 

If you look at the pink line on the grid, you'll see that I had some issues getting the second digit pressed for 2.5 or 2.2 and ended up dipping down to 2.0 for brief periods of time. I can't complain. At least it doesn't  make me hit the up arrow to get to the numbers I want. I like the nice short cut of being able to just hit the 2 twice if I wanted 2.5 or 2 then 5 for 2.5. I just need to get faster at it. 

My back didn't really hurt on this walk which was amazing. However, my feet did go numb about halfway through. They came back during some of the rest intervals, but kept going more numb during the work intervals. By the time I was done though, they were okay again. It took a full three minutes into the cooldown to get my breathing back into the 120s. 

I learned that my black leggings are not cut out for the treadmill. They just don't pull up far enough into the crotch. I don't know what it is, but they just hang down slightly too low and I ended up with some pain on my inner thigh of my right leg. I kept trying to pull them up, but it just wasn't working. It still hurts and was burning when I was in the shower. This is really going to suck if I can't walk on the treadmill for a couple of days while this heals. One time, I wore the wrong sweatpants for the treadmill and they had holes in the inner thigh. I thought I could power through, but I got this horrid chafing and I had to skip the treadmill for a few days. I tried with better sweatpants and it was too rough. I ended up having to wear my jean shorts for a couple days because I'm a slow healer. I hate wearing jeans on the treadmill, but they were the only thing with fabric that wouldn't irritate the rash. I do not want to relive that again. 

So anyway, I really like the interval stuff since it really takes my mind off the fact that I'm on the treadmill and don't want to be on it. I didn't even really focus on the whole 1/4 of the way down, 1/3 of the way done, etc.......I mainly focused on the number of intervals left. That was rather refreshing. I think I might have found something that works to help with the treadmill boredom. Having YouTube playing also helps, but I need to find a new channel since I seem to be stuck on Eric Church and it's not like Pandora that rotates. I get the same songs in the same order every day and I need some new material. 

Okay that's it for now. I closed the vent in this room since I'll be off for a week and I'd prefer to walk in the cold. I forgot to put on a sweatshirt before coming in here so now I'm freezing! I kept the door closed since hubby was listening to death metal and it's way too heavy for me. I came in here pretty much just to have some quiet time. 

My Hike

What it should have been