Morning Workout:
Is it hot in here, or is it just my Brazilian Butt-in training? Oh Lord! Let me just say that a twenty-five minute, 1.15 mile, incline, treadmill workout might not sound all that challenging, but when you’re trying to go from an Alaskan to a Brazilian Butt, it totally kicks your…well, BUTT!
I have not sweat that much in such a short amount of time in FOREVER! And I haven’t felt this energized about my workout since before Mother Nature decided to target St. Paul Island for her snow barrage/temper tantrum location.
I started off at a 5.0 pace for the five-minute warm-up. Once the incline started increasing, I slowed the tempo down to 4.0 so I would be alb to keep up without hanging onto the handrails. When the workout called for a range of incline percentage, I went with the larger number. Yea, I’m that bad ass.
By the time I reached the 11:00 minute mark/12% incline, I was a’huffin’ and a’puffin! A sweaty mess for sure.
I was truly struggling at this point, and I allowed myself to hold onto the handrails of my treadmill for 10 seconds, release for 20, hold again for 10 BUT only for 12% incline. It was just enough of a mental boost to get me through those two minutes of hell.
Once I had finished the last minute of the “meat” of the treadmill workout, I was ecstatic over only a 4% incline – when has that ever happened?? As 25:00 clicked onto the display of my iPod, I stopped the treadmill, lumbered over to my stretching area, laid on my back and allowed my heart rate to come back down to a normal pace. Once I felt like a human being again, I pulled off two sets of this Upper Body Burst workout I created back in October.
I used 10 lb. hand weights for this workout, and I can definitely feel it! For some reason, for the first time, I decided to hold my weights differently during the squats. Typically I let my arms hang down by my sides during squats; this time I held them up by my face, just under my chin. Just changing that one position was enough to crank up the intensity!
All-in-all, I felt for the first time that my workouts were at a challenging intensity again, and my stamina is ready to be challenged. And this is the perfect reminder of what I am capable of doing:
