Exercise

So before I weigh myself in the morning and be disappointed in the numbers on the scale, I want to take a minute to feel proud of myself for my exercise tonight. I was feeling tired, my quads have been hurting lately but I have been diligently getting on the elliptical every night this week. I had every intention at the beginning of the holiday to exercise twice a day but was only able to do it once. By the time I woke up it was already mid afternoon and I ended up studying or cooking instead (both good things). However, tonight I was going to give myself a pass on the exercise, but then I remembered the cup of ice cream I had earlier in the day.
I went to a place to study that serves vegan ice cream.... yeah like I was going to pass that up. I got a small which was about 5 oz of sea-salt caramel chocolate chip ice cream with vegan cookie dough added to it. I was in heaven for about the 10 min I was able to make it last. My study buddy got a good chuckle from me licking the bowl....

Any way back to the point. I got up around 2:30 put on my exercise clothes and headed to the little gym they have here in my apt complex. I decided I'd go 30 min on the treadmill instead of using the elliptical. (For the past several days I have been doing 50 min on the elliptical while I watch an episode of a Japanese drama :) ) I decided I was going to try for 2 min of running in intervals after a 10 min warmup. By 9 min in I was ready to go and started jogging (this is what I call running for now) but the point is I had the little number on the machine at 4.5mph. I did that for a full 3 min!!! then after a 2 min walk at 3.8mph I did it again only at 4.6mph. Another 3 min! I was able to do 5 min intervals of 3 min jogging and 2 min walking upping the pace of the jog by .1mph at a time. I did this for 20 min and then went up to a 5mph jog for the last minute. After this my cool down was a 2 minutes walking at 4mph then dropping back down to 3.4mph for the last 3 min. I want to take a minute to be proud of myself because I didn't think I could do this. When I first started trying to run I became winded after 40 seconds, and could push for 1 to 1.5 minutes but then I would need 2-3 minutes of walking before I could even try to attempt it again. To be able to switch it around is awesome! On the 4th cycle I was tired and my legs were getting a bit sore but I think I might have been able to push it for a 5th go. Maybe next time ;)