Ode To My Treadmill

Okay, so this isn’t an ode. It’s not going to be a poem, sonnet, or verse either. In fact, it’s not even going to rhyme (except maybe by accident). Nope, just a regular old blog post. However… I needed a title, and that’s what came to mind.

So here we go…

I started a group about three months ago, ‘5 For Fitness,’ because I’d been reading about how much healthier it is to move for five minutes every hour as opposed to once a day for half an  hour or so.

In preparation, I bought myself a cool digital timer, which I thought was dead….until my daughter – with a smug little smile on her face – peeled the vinyl thing with numbers off…then it worked fine. The plan was to set it for fifty-five minutes, and just keep restarting it every time I finished a five-minute session.

Me being me…the same me who thought she broke a rib or few a couple of years ago…but it wound up being seriously pulled muscles from working out too hard in the pool (because it didn’t feel like I was working out in the water – so I worked out harder)…I put 100% into the new program…and burned out after a couple of weeks.

In case you didn’t know, five minutes every hour, eighteen hours a day winds up being ninety minutes of exercise every day. And when you’re busting your butt to make every minute count…right out of the gate…well…

Hopefully I’ll never be so tired that I’ll have one of these kinds of accidents. Of course with things like stability balls and pogo sticks, some of these people were begging for broken bones.

Let’s just say I’m using my head this time. Mostly. I make sure to spend a few minutes (up to thirty) every couple of hours doing something active. I also spend three sessions on my treadmill…for a minimum of ten minutes each time.

Every other day I spend the first couple of minutes walking and doing arm curls with light weights – eighty of them (four different kinds, twenty curls each). And then I spend the rest of the time lost in my current ‘treadmill book.’ At the moment, it’s The Walk (Richard Paul Evans).

My plan is to read to the first page break or new chapter after I hit the ten minute mark. Usually that works nicely, my time varying between ten and twelve minutes.

Not last night though. I was so tired yesterday I could have wept, but still forced myself to get on that torture device thing the third time. Ten minutes. That’s it. Not a second beyond that. I’d just make my daily goal and then fall into an exhausted slumber.

Uh…

Didn’t quite work out that way. Mr. Evans varies his chapter length more than any author I’ve ever read. Some chapters are maybe a page long, while others…

By the time I hit twenty minutes, I’d given up on finding a page break or new chapter…and just stopped at the first page that started with a new paragraph. My legs felt like they were on fire, and my knees were aching, and I’d gone thirteen minutes over my goal (yay!). This was in addition to everything else I’d done off and on all day, which is why my legs decided they’d had enough.

Anyway, if you’re interested in moving more every day, I think you can send me a request to join the 5 For Fitness group. I’m not sure exactly how that works, but the more the merrier.

I have two requirements. First that you’re serious about getting fit (or fitter). Second…no stalkers or spammers allowed. I will immediately boot anyone who falls into those categories out of the group…without hesitation. 🙂