Intervals

I treated myself yesterday to a lovely coffee/chat date with a friend I haven't seen in quite some time. I suggested meeting at Barnes and Noble so that I could check out some magazines, get what I wanted from them, and leave without spending a dime. After we were through visiting, I went to the magazine racks, picked out four that appealed to me, and went to the comfy chairs to peruse. One of the magazines I picked up was Women's Runner (or something to that effect). There was a ton of wonderful information in there, and I have to say, if you want to get motivated to exercise, try investing in one of the neat "gadgets" they feature in those magazines. I made a mental list of at least five things I want to invest in someday, one of which is a heart rate monitor and watch that works without the use of a chest strap. Sounds fantastic! That would DEFINITELY get me out and increasing my heart rate more often (at least for a little while).  Anyways, I stumbled across this little box that gave guidelines for Interval Training. It goes as follows:

3 min. jog to warm up
15 second sprint (at 8mph and 12% incline)
15 second rest (feet on the sides of the treadmill, with the belt continuing below you at max speed)
15 second on/off intervals for 3-4 minutes
3 min walk to cool down

Now, as you all know, I am not a super athlete, so I adjusted the speed and incline slightly to make it a little more realistic for a woman such as myself. But I'm getting ahead of myself..

Last night I could not sleep... I think it might be because I was SO excited about a couple of things that I just couldn't get myself into "Z" mode, so I fell asleep with the tv on at around 2am. I woke up to infomercials, and I was hooked for a longer-than-necessary amount of time. I partially watched two different informercials selling home workout programs that mostly consisted of high-intensity workouts that didn't last as long as your average hour or so at the gym. So between seeing all those hot abs on tv and remembering my new insight into intervals, I got ready for the gym with a lot of spunk in my step, ready to sweat like a pig with the expectation of someday looking like an infomercial mama.

I actually REALLY enjoyed the intervals. I mean, they were really REALLY hard, but it's crazy how fast you can start to really sweat. I did the ten minutes or so, and then I did about another three minutes of intervals and a cool down. All together I was on the treadmill for fifteen minutes. It felt great. But something funny happened... as I walked to the yoga room to do some strength training, the spunk that seemed to be present before mysteriously began to vanish with every stride. I did do some pikes, some push ups, and some leg lifts, so it didn't completely disappear, but it's pretty safe to assume that my abs look the same as they did when I woke up this morning. I was able to do about twenty minutes of stretching and some yoga postures, so that was definitely beneficial after tightening up my leg muscles on the treadmill.

It was good to start my Saturday off with a bang, and I was so happy to see so many others at the gym doing the same thing! Lots of ladies enjoying some booty shaking bliss at Zumba, too... if you haven't tried that before, you just have to! It's a blast.

Peace, love & bashful abdominals