Last summer, V and I discussed the possibility of buying an elliptical to have at the house, as a means of getting ourselves into better shape than we’d been. Having set aside a little extra money that I earned during Ren Faire, in December we made that a reality.
So, I’ve been running every other day for about three months now. I started aiming for half an hour, and ended up getting about 4 miles in on my early attempts. During January, I made that consistent. In February, I bumped up to 5 mile runs, and started to adjust the tension for higher difficulty, with a variable scale on the elliptical from 1-8. I would run the first two miles on tension 2, the third on 3, the fourth on 4, and back down to 2 for the fifth mile. I was able to cut my time on these “hill runs” to 26:53.
For March, I have been focusing more on speed. I’ve been maintaining a five mile run, but leaving the tension setting on 2 for a steady flat-track feeling. I’m currently sitting at 23:27 for my best time, and I’m pretty content with that.
I’m not about to turn into a fitness nut (I like my beer and pizza way too much for that), and I’m not going to start blogging constantly about my running, but I wanted to say that I’m very happy to have found something that works for me, and that I can continue to do to help myself feel and look better.
The Swords of the Ancients 