Breaking A Sweat

It's only taken me about a year, but I finally got used to the elliptical that Mom bought last year. Since October I've been walking outside for about 45 minutes a day, but in recent weeks the weather has been terrible (windy, rainy, etc) so I decided that I really need to look toward indoor exercise equipment to reach my daily requirement.

Mom bought a TV/VCR/DVD combo within the last month so now I can take my mind off walking in place by watching my taped soap or popping in one of the many TV shows that I have on DVD. Did you know that a one-hour (regular) TV show comes out to about 42 minutes without commercials? That's pretty close to my 45 minute requirement. Convenient isn't it? Today I watched half of the pilot episode for SeaQuest DSV (recently released on DVD - it's about time).

Between today and yesterday I was able to get up to 45 minutes without problem. Granted, I wasn't completely out of shape after walking that long outside for the last 4 months. A year ago, I could barely go 6 minutes before I wanted to keel over. Staring at boxes in the basement wasn’t particularly inspiring either.

One important change I was to wear appropriate, breathable clothing. The first time I tried the elliptical last week, I barely made it to the 30 minute mark. I was wearing heavy sweatpants so I think I got hotter than I really need to.

The other key to being able to make it for 45 minutes was to keep it slow and work my way up to speed. If I worked too hard too early, I wouldn't have made it either. By the end, I was able to speed things up and probably could have stayed on longer than my goal time.

The display is currently unavailable until I figure out how to change the battery so I don't know how many calories I burned and I can't increase the resistance either. I'm apparently all thumbs at the moment and can't open the compartment.

All said, I'm feeling inspired about exercising in the basement. Maybe I could have been a decent athlete had I been well trained and motivated?

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