Weather - Walking - Wonderful Dessert

It was a beautiful day today so I went to the movies to celebrate by seeing Captain America: Winter Soldier. As I was watching a movie about a government turning against it's citizens in real life our own government was setting up for a real life stand off with some ranchers in a land grab of some sort. Real life & art.. After I left the theater I grabbed some strawberries, chopped them up, sprinkled some Splenda on them and took them to Cory's house with some sour cream saying, "Hey, wanna go for a walk then we'll eat this?" Turns out that was just the key to turn the Cory going for a walk lock. We grabbed a neighbor and her four kids and went for a walk. It was beautiful and we were racing a thunderstorm out and back. It was a race well run, and we won.

What this map doesn't show you is that at the end of the walk is a hill, a real life honest to goodness hill. I say hill. It's not that big a hill. According to my GPS it's about 40ft (4 stories) in 0.15 miles (or 792ft) Somehow I don't think this is right. It's a lot steeper than I'm coming up with at only 5%. The problem is my map doesn't show where the hill starts so I'm using where I started running to find it, but I started running before the start of the hill. My peak speed was over 11mph. It wasn't for long, but it WAS up to the base and then half way up the hill. I slowed significantly as the hill got steeper.

The point is though, I ran all the way to the top of the hill and beat both 12 year olds who were on bikes to the top. They were both surprised. I was also surprised. My 31 & 40 year old friends were also impressed. She said, "I've never seen a white-boy run that fast." He said, "I don't think you should run that fast while chasing boys on bikes out in public any more." I don't think they were as appreciative of my athletic form as they should have been.

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.