Up Hill and Making It

Jillian Michaels is kicking my butt on a regular basis now... workout one was tough, and workout two was even harder... I'm thinking that I'm going to go back and do one again... then maybe try two again the next day. I don't want to push it too hard without being semi-comfortable with those workouts. Meaning that I want to be successful with this program and not burn myself out OR hurt myself.

The workouts really are pretty good - they're shorter than I'd typically workout without an organized plan, but they are much more challenging than what I'd set up for myself. So it's both a good thing and a bad thing. I stress a lot about the fact that I'm not burning enough calories, but I know that the long-term benefits of what I'm doing are far greater than the calorie burn will show me.

The plan has you walking at a pretty brisk pace, but the killer is the incline - in workouts one and two it takes you up to an incline of 6 which is pretty high... the machine goes to 12, and I've personally gone up to 10 before but not for a sustained period of time. This keeps you up there and forces a warm-up and cool-down. So it's really more of a complete workout than I'd give myself, and I feel pretty good about it.

It is designed to be 3 workouts a week for 8 weeks, but since my goals for working out are higher than that - I'm just going to do some repeating of the workouts. It will go up to higher inclines and take my speed up from 3.5 mph to 5.0 mph which freaks me out - but that's why I want to make sure that I'm doing each workout until it's not challenging anymore... to push myself, but not kill myself.

Interestingly enough - since I've been working out - my fluid intake has gone up considerably, and I feel really good. I've got more energy than I've had in a loooooong time - so it's all working out nicely.

Tomorrow is question/answer day - so if you have any last minute questions - send them my way tonight. :-)