Leslie Sansone's Walking DVDs

Today was a blizzard. I was supposed to run four miles today but it just wasn't happening. Not only was it not happening outside due to the 30+mph wind and snow and ice... it wasn't happening in a gym because that's 10 miles away. You see now the flaw in my plan of getting a gym membership when the weather's too bad to go outside... sometimes it will be too bad to get to the gym!

But I prepared for that. I bought some Leslie Sansone walking inside DVDs. Now they're not running. They don't pretend to be. Honestly, if I ran in the house I'd tear the place apart. I'm too big to be running inside. I can walk inside though and I did today for an hour. It's more than just walking... it's pretty athletic walking to tell the truth. I got a good cardio hour in. I got my heartrate up and I got a little bit of a schwitz going. Now, I wasn't dripping with sweat, and I didn't sweat like I would if I'd run four miles outside or on a treadmill, but it was a good workout that burned calories, gave me good cardio, and got me up off the (drum roll) COUCH OF DOOM!!!! (thunder and lightning now.)

So, if there's a chance you'll bail on a workout because you can't get to a gym grab one of her walking DVDs. I got the four hour one because it's an hour long and that's what I thought was a good at home work out time frame and it was.
She's super positive and upbeat and not at all annoying to listen to. Some fitness people irritate me after I've listened to them for too long. I've done this DVD a couple times and she doesn't make me crazy. Honestly, I think I'd kind of like to meet her in person.

Short post because it's the second today, but I wanted to mention the DVD in case you were considering an in-home cardio option and didn't know what to think about these. Target has a decent selection of them as well if you don't like my omnipresent amazon links.

Day after soreness

So, the first week of Couch to 5k I didn't experience any soreness after running, just after walking on a down day... that was when I found I was stepping out too far, increasing the length of my stride and driving my heel down into the ground. My shins didn't love that at all.

This week though, week two with the increased run times (increased by 50% from previous week) I'm noticing soreness the next day in my calves. It's not a bad soreness, just an awareness of the muscle. It makes the importance of the rest day between runs more obvious though. The resting isn't sitting in an easy chair with my feet up though, and that was something I learned from running websites. Resting is just a different type of exercise, walking, biking, something that isn't running... and isn't as hard as the running. It's still a time for the muscles to recover, but not to recover by going comatose while I watch a football game and binge on carbohydrates.

So, today my calves are a little sore, and weirdly enough my left knee for the first time. This is the first of two rest days that I moved from the weekend to here due to work travel. If I'm unable to hit a treadmill or a track in Denver this week I may do some, don't laugh, Leslie Sansone work out in my hotel room. She's got a 4 mile thing that I could do on the run day. It wouldn't be as intense as a run, but it'd be longer and endurance is good... just need to keep up the working out so I stay fit and as close to on plan as the job and real life will allow.

For tonight's active rest I think I'll hit the bike at the hotel and read some on the kindle.