My main running goal? No crippling injuries.

Yesterday and today consisted of my typical cross-training festival of Friedrich (Cathe, that is).  On Saturday I did Supercuts again, and, as always, it was DEEEE-licious.  My glutes will surely be firing correctly after doing that one for a month or two, and my entire core always feels worked after that one.  Decided I would tack on the Core #2 workout afterwards because I hadn't ever done it before.  Let's just say it is tougher than the Core #1 workout but doable; however, one should be wary of any workout that features a move called "corkscrew crunches."

Today was upper-body only, and I did Cathe's Upper Body Pyramid simply because I didn't do it last week.  I could really feel it getting after my back and pecs; dumbbells were strewn about everywhere this morning.  It was a beautiful way to start the day.

I know you'd love to hear all of the nitty-gritty details of this weekend's weight-lifting and cross-training Cathextravaganza, but I feel the need to address something a person said to me about my long run on Saturday.  That something was this:

"10 minutes per mile?  That's not very fast.  Can't you run faster than that?"

Yes.  Yes I can.  But there was a time when that was a blazing speed for me.

Not many of you know the story behind my first 5K, ran on June 19th, 2010.  I had lost a lot of weight by 2010, and had been working out faithfully since 2005 doing everything BUT running.  However, I had not quit smoking yet--I was smoking almost 2 packs a day by the middle of 2010.  Yes, 40 ciggies a day for me.  And all while working out for an hour every morning.  Everyone always acts so incredulous when they see someone smoking after working out at the gym; I think I'm one of the few people who understand why they do it.

It really is an addiction, smoking.  You have weird addict thoughts, and the ciggies take over.  They lie to you.  They whisper that you need them, that you can't live without them.  They make you panic when you realize you're out of cigarettes, and you will risk speeding tickets and will leave your house looking like a rug they uncover at the bottom of a pile of stuff on a "Hoarders" episode just to go get a pack.  One time my ciggies told me that I should keep smoking because, after all, what else would I do when I took the dogs outside?!?  Just STAND THERE, for Christ's sake?

Yep.  Addict thinking.

So after watching my mother-in-law die of cancer and realizing I didn't want to die that way, I decided to quit.  It wasn't easy, but I made a plan based on the mathematical concept of EVEN NUMBERS.  Every time I went outside to get my nicotine groove on, you see, I always smoked two ciggies.  Therefore, to start down my path to nicotine-freeness, I should cut that number in half for a week.  Therefore, I would reduce my overall nicotine consumption by half, and then cut that number in half the next week, and so on and so forth until I wasn't smoking any at all.  Easy, I thought.  Nothin' to it.

Except that first week almost killed me--killed me with a crushing sense of fatigue the likes of which I have never experienced since.  I hadn't realized how much the cigs had sped up my metabolism, and I was experiencing a huge crash just by smoking HALF as much.  After that went away, I did pretty well for a few weeks until I got down to 5 a day...and then I sat at 5 a day for a few weeks.

My life, unfortunately, began to revolve around those 5 cigarettes.  I could think of nothing all day but when I could suck down one of those precious nicotine nuggets.  I thought about them constantly.  I daydreamed about them.

It was so damn pathetic.

In the middle of my pathetic 5-a-day parade, I realized that I had to go get a haircut.  As I sat in the comfy chairs waiting for my best stylist ever named Courtney to finish with a customer, I saw a poster hanging on the front door of the salon that read:

"Brett's Run--5K Race."

I didn't even know how long a 5K was (I had to go home and look it up).  But I did know that my husband used to run cross country in high school, so if he could do it, how hard could this running thing be?  I had an entire two weeks before the race to get my training in, after all.

Well, after one day of "training," (which consisted of me thinking I could run 3 miles but almost puking after 2) I knew I couldn't be doing this smoking thing anymore.  Not only did I look absolutely ridiculous having a smoke after running around the neighborhood, but I realized that to be a good runner, smoking was a definite no-no.  A no-no-no-no-NO.

So I finally set a quit date.  June 15th, 2010.  I smoked the last of my 5 ciggies, wrote a good-bye letter to my ciggies, and gave the rest of the pack to my husband for him to dispose of at his discretion (I found out later he took them to a dumpster after he poured water all over them).  The three next days between quitting and the race weren't that bad (most of my withdrawal came within my first week).  On race day, I woke up all nervous and jittery; even my husband got infinitely tired of me asking, "So do I warm up NOW?  How fast should I go?  Should I take walk breaks? Am I heel striking?  Do I warm up now?" that he rolled his eyes at me.

The best thing was that I didn't think about ciggies at all that morning.  Just racing.  I ran just to run, just because I could, just to have fun.  And I came in at a 10:00 minute/mile pace, good enough for 10th in my age group.  My first 5K.  I was so proud of myself, especially of the fact that I hadn't walked once (although I thought about it quite often).  I caught the running bug right then and there in the parking lot afterwards, plotting how I could get better, do better on my next run.

My 5K pace is now much faster (between 7:40 and 8:00).  But I think wanting to run my first full 26.2 at my former 5K pace is a pretty reasonable goal.  And a pretty damn good one.  You see, everyone has a different fast, slow, good, and bad.  We're all at different levels on this journey called running.

And sometimes the goal of running isn't to run as fast as you can; it's just to see if you can go the distance without suffering horrific crippling injuries.  (Well, in my case it is, anyway.)

Cathe's Burn Sets Round 2: I can't smell my own fire

In order to recover from my 18-mile run I did yesterday (my quads still aren't speaking to me), I decided to fill this cross-training day with the wonderful world of weight work.  Specifically, I did Cathe's Burn Sets again from her new XTrain series.

This is a solid workout, and I actually heavied up all my weights this time.  In fact, at some points I was using heavier weights than Cathe.  But not as heavy as I should have to feel the burn.  I know I should have looked like this during some point in the workout:

photo credit: pasukaru76 via photopin cc

But instead I felt more like this:

photo credit: slworking2 via photopin cc

In this workout you do three exercises per muscle group (chest, shoulders, back, biceps, triceps), and then you do what Cathe calls a burn set, which is an exercise designed to really make those muscle fibers burn baby burn.  They usually involved resistance tubing and a firewalker band, which required me to go get even more equipment (I hate workouts that involve a lot of equipment).

Again, I wasn't feeling it.  I mean I was feeling it.  But I wasn't FEELING it.  There was no spontaneous combustion of my muscles going on.  At all.  Maybe a sputtering of a flame.  Like a sparkler on the 4th of July.

Hmmmm.

I did heavy up on all my weights, but the heaviest weight I own is a set of 20 pound dumbbells.  I could have picked up my 40 pound dogs, but I am not interested in getting bitten.  I mean, I was using those 20s on exercises I never have before (biceps and shoulders, mainly), and was whomping out tricep extensions with my 12s when I normally use 8s, but those burn sets didn't burn.

Maybe my muscles are made of flame retardant materials.  Or I just need heavier weights.

Winter running, gloves, and snot rockets.

When I woke up today, my left Achilles felt fabulous rather than tight and sore on its lateral aspect, which is how it has usually felt for well over a month.

What better way to celebrate this joyous occasion than to go for an 8 mile run in 13 degree wind chills?  I know, that's exactly what you would have thought, too.  And you also would have thought to wear this stunning running outfit:

Neon yellow with purple running tights.  Please note dog -shaped throw-rug in the background.

You must understand that I run in the country because I live in the country--and this means I often run to the sound of guns being fired at some country critter(s), and I wear obnoxious colors to be seen not only by motorists but also by people with guns firing at country critters.  Although what with people killing elementary school children and firefighters lately, I picked up the pace a bit when I heard the guns, hoping that someone wasn't trying to use me in my bright yellow neon-ness as target practice.

But I would like to talk about one piece of running gear I have on in that picture: my gloves.  Having braved 2 winters as a runner in Illinois, I have been in constant search of a pair of winter gloves that are lightweight enough to not make me fear of losing fingers to frostbite in the later miles of any cold run, and I think I've found them.  They are Saucony Women's Ulti-Mitten gloves, which are pretty damned pricey but worth every penny.  They come with a very bright light that is USB rechargeable and have a spot on the glove to clip the light, so no need for carrying it.  But what really amazed me was that these gloves are like gloves and mittens AT THE EXACT SAME TIME.

I know, you're probably thinking, "Hey, idiot--they have made those little flippity-top gloves now for a while.  These aren't so special."  Well, I beg to vehemently disagree with you and then roll my eyes at you smugly while putting one hand on my hip.

You see, these gloves are actually full-on gloves; most of the flip-top type glove/mittens I've found have the fingertips of the gloves cut off, which makes running with them in 13 degree windchills a tad dangerous, in my opinion, unless you have hand warmers with you.  Instead of cutting the fingertips off so you can manipulate things without feeling like you're hitting puberty again, they make the tip of each index finger and thumb a flip-top in and of itself.  The mitten-part of the Ulti-Mitten then flips over the gloves; if you ever don't want to use the mitten, there is a pocket on the back of the glove into which you can tuck the mitten-sleeve-thing.

These gloves have been finger-savers along with sanity savers.  Once my fingers get cold, my inner whiny-baby starts coming out, and there's just something about thinking I may lose a finger that demotivates me on my runs.  But with these gloves, that whiny little voice sniveling about how expensive amputation would be and wondering if my insurance would cover running-related frostbite has been entirely silent, much to my pleasure.  Do my fingers get cold?  Yep.  Do they go numb and start hurting?  No.  Runs are much more enjoyable when you're not contemplating how you'll type your blog posts minus a few fingers.

Another cool feature (no cold weather running pun intended) that these gloves/mitten hybrids possess is a little strip of soft cloth on each glove that--are you ready for this--is PERFECT for wiping your nose after you let loose a snot rocket on the fly.  I produce copious amounts of snot during cold runs, and my nose sure could have used this feature on several of last winter's runs where I felt like the bottom of my nose was encased in frozen crusty-nastiness at the end of a run.  (Note: My husband thinks this feature is pretty gross.  But he likes that I don't come in the house with snot frozen to clothing and/or body parts.)

Overall, it was a nice little run I had today.  I did have to keep the pace down as to not aggravate the Achilles as much, but sometimes it's nice to have a run where you're not trying to keep some number in your head or in your feet.

Or snot in your nose instead of on your face.

Lessons my barbell taught me.

In the name of trying to keep my little Achilles injury a little one, I continued my low-impact restriction on my nonrunning days by doing Cathe Friedrich's Low Max workout as the cardio portion of today's fitness regimen.  It's a step workout with seven intervals, each of which concludes with what Cathe calls "intensity blasts" and what I call "butt and leg melters."  I only did intervals 1-4 because I just wanted a little taste of cardio today, with the main entree being weight lifting.  This is because I love me some straight-up weight work because I believe it helps your endurance as a runner, especially when you are in a trail race and you are fighting desperately to pass the woman trying desperately to pass you but you have stronger quads so you get up the damn hill first and leave her ass in the dust.  Not that I'm competitive or anything.

Plus, I needed an excuse to whip out the new barbell I got for Christmas yesterday.  The 25 mph winds today combined with the cold temps (it's like it's winter or something) also convinced me I needed to stay inside and pump a bit o' the iron.

So, after my cardio with Cathe, I did some weights with Cathe.  (I am Cathe obsessed.  Don't judge me until you've seen how many other DVDs I've tried and thought were crap.  Cathe puts out quality stuff.)  Specifically, I did her High Reps workout because a barbell was involved and I haven't done this workout very often.  It's not my ultimate favorite weight workout of hers (is there really a need to do tricep dips after you've done standing tricep extensions, kickbacks, and lying extensions?), but there's a lot of variety in the exercises that decreases the boredom factor greatly.  Plus, have I mentioned she uses a barbell during the workout?

And now, an artist's rendering of what I looked like with my barbell:

I had a shirt on.  Really.

Today's word was definitely strength.  Along with a lot of other words that this child shouldn't learn until he is much, much older and can use them in proper context and with appropriate vigor.

Now, I have never even lifted a barbell until this morning, so I'm surprised that I didn't drop it on any of my body parts during the workout to give myself a large injury to go along with the little one in my Achilles.  I found that I actually prefer it for some exercises, especially back rows and upright rows, because it was easier on my shoulders. But I realized that, as far as working out with a barbell goes, I am pretty much clueless as to what weights I should use.  And since the workout only told me what poundage of dumbbells I needed for exercises involving dumbbells and NEVER ONCE stated the weights they used on the barbell exercises, I was in trial-and-error land with a heaping side of error. Here are some of those lessons I learned from my errors:

• While doing bicep curls visions of hernias were dancing through my head so furiously that I put down the barbell and picked up some lighter dumbbells out of concern for my own safety and maintaining the integrity of my lumbar intervertebral discs.  
• I astutely ascertained that 30 lbs is (currently) too heavy to be doing all sorts of partial bicep curl reps unless I enjoy the sound of my elbows bending in the direction opposite of which they should be bending.  
• It is very easy to knock your ceiling fan out of balance with a barbell, much to the consternation of a husband who is responsible for fixing said ceiling fan while giving you the stink-eye.
• It is very easy to knock myself over with the barbell when I do not balance it on my shoulders correctly during leg exercises.
• It takes me a long time to change out weight plates.  Like, a really long time.  I have never paused a video so much in my life just to prep for the next set of exercises.  If I were scoring myself in my own classroom on this skill, I would send myself to the after school help sessions we have for mandatory remediation.
• I felt like a total badass doing lat rows.
• If I kill myself while using this barbell (highly probable), my obituary will be a hilarious read.  

Looking over the list, I am aware that this list is nothing compared to what happened the first time I tried to use a step in a workout (a post that has yet to be written but needs to be written for the greater good).  I'm sure I'll get better with my barbell as I use it with more of my workouts.  Until then, any lessons you've learned or near-death experiences from when you tried out a new piece of workout equipment?


photo credit: theloushe via photopin cc

Nike people: I need more pockets.

It's Christmas, and I got lots of cool fitness stuff today (along with a lot of body wash/beauty products from the hubbs; I know I should be offended).  But first, a gratuitous picture of my dog on her new dog blanket Santa brought her:

And a picture of my other dog waiting with breathless anticipation for Daddy to come home on Christmas Eve:

Now that the obligatory dog pictures are out of the way, on to the fitness stuff I acquired this morning thanks to a day dedicated to a guy who you'd think would be fitter-looking if he has to haul all this stuff around (oops--no presents for me next year).

First, I received this awesome Nike Elements running jacket in screamingly blinding orange so people can see me before they hit me and/or give me the finger for running on their road.  I wore it on a six mile Christmas day "I will be eating large amounts for dinner so I need to run now" run, and was completely toasty and comfortable even while running in 23 degree weather (windchill at 16 degrees).  What I am dumbfounded by, however, is the fact the men's version of the EXACT SAME JACKET (at least I'm 99% sure it's the same jacket) which I found on the clearance rack at a large sporting goods store whose name is also a sexual innuendo has WAY more pockets-5 to be precise-to stash your phone, gels, hand warmers, 6-pack of beer, etc.  How many pockets does the women's version have?  One.  One little pocket that I shoved my phone into and struggled to zip shut. Judging by the size of some women's purses, you'd think the exact opposite is what the jacket makers at Nike would do....but no, this is not the case.  I had to stash my hand warmers in a butt pocket for my run today.  My butt was very, very warm, in case you were wondering.  Toasty buns, even.

Women's is on the left; men's version on the right.

Notice the ONE pocket on the women's, and 5--yes FIVE--pockets on the men's jacket.

Nike people:  I NEED MORE POCKETS.

So what other cool stuff did I get for Christmas?  Take a gander at this:

Your jealousy is palpable. But please note that I only received this as a gift because: a) I have been whining about wanting one for 2 years, and b) I have a shitload of Cathe Friedrich DVDs that call for a barbell.  I know that dumbbells are just as good, but I want that badass feeling of pumping iron with a barbell.  In fact, I'm pretty sure that you develop more muscle with a barbell because you look so badass.  Now I just need some 5 pound plates (this set didn't come with any) so I can be a badass in a wimpy girly kind of way.  But that's not going to stop me from busting this baby out tomorrow for cross training.  I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow, if I can lift my arms up to the keyboard afterwards.

My glutes are crybabies.

I am training for my first marathon in the spring.  This is because I am a total idiot, but that's an issue for another post.  Anyhoo, I decided to start blogging on this blog again to have it serve as a running training log of all of my workouts, so that way I can pinpoint the exact moment in time I injured myself, because I am good at injuring myself.  In fact, I should just make the point of my training to injure myself, so that way I can be successful all the time.  Everybody loves a winner!

Because of my most recent injury (an Achilles soreness that is only sore when I point my toes or sit on my heels.  I ran with it through a Ragnar, a 10K race, and a half marathon before I finally realized backing off a bit might actually make it better) I have been doing a lot of low-impact stuff.  Oh, I tried "recovering" doing high impact workouts like Cathe's Crossfire and To The Max after all those races, but my Achilles wasn't getting any better, strangely enough.  So I decided to dust off Cathe's Low Impact Series, which I hadn't done in about in a year. I honestly felt like I was totally wimping out due to the whole low-impact thing, but, as I mentioned before, I am a total idiot.

The workout I decided to do from this series was Cathe's Afterburn workout.  The description said "HiiT" on the back, which is what I really wanted to do and jump around a lot like an idiot on my injured Achilles but I couldn't, so I threw that puppy in the DVD player and got started.

After 20 minutes my glutes and hamstrings were crying real tears and hating me for continuing.

This was me making them shut up and do the rest of the workout:

Only I'm not a dude.

If you want nice glutes and hammies (plus some pretty good cardio), this is the workout for you.  If your glutes are big babies like mine, make them do it anyway.  I'm sure they'll be crying like babies all week.

Because I wanted all of my muscles in tears, I did 30 minutes of upper-body weight work afterwards and tacked on 10 minutes of abs.  My body isn't speaking to me right now.  I should be in great shape for that treadmill speed session I have planned for tomorrow!  (Remember, I'm a total idiot.)

photo credit: thedalogs via photopin cc
photo credit: Kevin McShane via photopin cc

Random Fitness Ramblings

The past few weeks have been full of fantastical fitness happenings in my life.  Well, not really, but I have thought a lot about stuff that's important to me regarding fitness, recovery, and working out lately.  So, if you choose to read further, you will now be subjected to some random fitness ramblings about topics that probably only interest me.  And maybe you.  But you'll never know unless you read it, right?

Rambling #1: Compression Stuff

When I do my training runs, I have this tendency to run all my speed work too fast.  I'm talking "so fast that I got seriously injured and thoughts of stress fractures were prancing around in my frontal lobes at all times and giving me more wrinkles" fast.  In my injured state, I read a lot about what other runners were saying helped them not become injured during training (besides stop running my speed work so moronically overfast).  One of those things was compression socks/sleeves/garments.  So, having a habit of plunking down tons of cash for stuff simply because it's for running, I bought some compression socks and sleeves from various companies (CEP, PRO Compression, and SL3S) and have been wearing them during training and for running races. I have even purchased recovery socks, and--believe it or not--wear them after a race or hard workout to recover.  Below are some images of how sexy they are and remind me of when I was a kid in the 80s and we all wore our socks that high and we were the COOLEST:

Grey shorts = I look like I didn't quite make it to the bathroom during my run.  SL3S compression socks.

Recovery socks.  They feel awesome.

CEP compression socks for my first run in Ragnar.  I'm not a huge fan of these.

Half-marathoning-it in my PRO Compression socks.  I dig these.  

To put all these socks to the test, I performed a series of highly scientific experiments.  For the socks designed for running, I ran in them.  For the socks designed for recovery, I recovered in them.  From those little experiments, I used a rigorous data collection method known as "asking myself a question and then answering it."  The question asked was, "Do I hurt less during and after I use these expensive things--Yes or No?" After careful systemic analysis of the data, I have come to the conclusion that the CEP socks I have are the ones I like the least.  I experience the most pain during and after my workouts in them (maybe I need to go down a size, even though I measured my calf circumference just before buying them?).  My favorites so far are the SL3S calf sleeves and the PRO Compression socks, because I experience the least pain during and after running.  The only negative about them is that these companies need to start making them in purple or navy blue, because those are my two favorite colors in the entire universe. (Can you tell from the pics?)  The recovery socks I do like as well--I sleep in them and my legs wake up feeling all bouncy and ready for the day.  I feel it important to note at this point that the shin splints that plagued me after my last half marathon have pretty much disappeared since I have been recovering/training in these socks.  But that could also have been a result of....

Rambling #2: Ice baths.

 As I have already mentioned, I had the shin splints from hell.  This was right before I was supposed to run  Ragnar Chicago, which I thought might be a tad unpleasant with shin splints.  After coming back from an easy run with my shins screaming, I elected to try ice immersion for my shins.

This was my response face to my husband's incredulous "why is my wife sticking her leg in a bucket of ice" look.  Yeah, I can throw down the looks, yo.

Now, some say that you shouldn't do this, because you're basically stopping the recovery process, and it is from this process that you make gains in strength, speed and endurance.  Others say you should do this to aid in recovery and to help your legs feel fantastic the next day.  Because I wanted to see for myself if this whole icing thing was worth it, I again resorted to my science teacher training and designed an experiment to see if plunging body parts in ice would help them feel better the next day (as well as my nagging, annoying ankle injury that made it feel like someone was pulling up a sock that was on the inside of my skin).  Here's a run down of my experiment and my results:

Step #1: Run.  Then stop running at some point.
Step #2: Immerse body parts in ice for 10-15 minutes or however long I could stand it before I wimped out.
Step #3: Go to work and earn money for more running stuff.
Step #4: Come home and go to sleep.  Dream about buying running stuff.
Step #5: Determine how body parts plunged in ice felt the next day upon rising and stumbling down the steps half-asleep and not stepping on any sleeping dogs.
Step #6: Repeat Steps #1-5 for 3 months.

Results:  Said body parts that were immersed feel better--MUCH better.  Shin splints have not been felt for at least 4 weeks, but this could also be a result of a vacation in Alabama where the researcher's mother makes excellent Southern food that may have special healing properties.  Further experiments are warranted that involve eating copious amounts of this food.

So, according to my research, ice = body parts feel better.  As a matter of fact, I have moved up to taking full-on ice baths after running (see picture below).

Just chillin.  Dig the homemade ice cubes?

However, icing will not prevent you from doing stupid things while training, like running your speed work too fast.

Rambling #3: Cathe Friedrich never fails to make me think I'm going to die.

Cathe Friedrich is my favorite DVD-trainer-person ever.  I will gladly arm wrestle anyone who wants to argue with me on this, especially since Cathe has done quite the nice job of helping me get some upper-body strength and definition through the remnants of my former fatness.  I did two of her workouts this week that were new to me, To the Max and Pyramid Upper Body.  The former is a step workout like no other--no complicated choreography, just simple HiiT moves that will leave you a sweaty, drenched mess and needing a towel to wipe the sweat off of anything in your exercise space because it will be drenched in sweat, too.  The latter is a pure weight-lifting workout that uses simple moves but pyramids what weight you use to do them.  How effective is this workout?  Well, let me tell you all of the things I am had a hard time doing today as a result of doing that workout yesterday:

• Washing my back in the shower
• Making right turns while driving the car
• Making left turns while driving the car
• Opening the front door 
• Closing the front door
• Doing anything involving lifting my arms above the level of my shoulders
• Doing anything that involved moving my arms medially or laterally

I think I had been hitting a plateau with my weight-work (I believe it makes you a stronger runner who can endure to the end when form starts to crumble), and this workout was what my muscles needed to wake 'em up again.  Plus, I love Cathe because she doesn't just make the same old DVD with a new name on the cover. And she's not afraid to lift heavy or make workouts that make me think I will drop dead after it's over.  And she doesn't scream at you, she motivates you.  I love that woman.

Well, I appreciate it if you've made it all the way through this rambling post about ramblings. If you have any ramblings of your own that pertain to fitness or any of the contents of this post, feel free to share.  Or not.  This is a no-pressure kind of blog.

So I got this stationary bike thing.

So I got this stationary bike thing for Christmas.  A NordicTrack one, the GX2.0.  Nothing screams "I love you" or celebrates Jesus' birth quite like a stationary bike.

I didn't ask for one, but my husband, knowing how much I love to alternate biking with running when the weather is nice for about 3 seconds per year here in Illinois, got me a stationary bike so I can still do this during the winter.  Last year he got me a treadmill so I can run in the winter as well.

I can now not only run to nowhere, I can bike to nowhere as well.  I was actually perversely excited about this.

We put it next to the treadmill in my itty-bitty workout "room," so now my treadmill has someone to talk to and doesn't have to stare out the back window at the empty farm field through the sheers all the time.  I am sure they will become good friends.

BFFs!

After we let those two get acquainted, I hopped on the bike to grab a workout.  It was quiet.  Too quiet.  I don't know what I was expecting, but I wasn't expecting "quiet."  This thing is an EXERCISE MACHINE, dammit.  It was EXPENSIVE.  It should make lots of stationary bike noise to match the tremendous amount of calories I was burning.  It should groan along with my grunts to tell any person or escaped farm animal that happened to be walking through the empty field behind my house that we are WORKING OUT and we are SERIOUS about it.

Instead I pedaled quietly along.  Pedal, pedal, pedal.  Quiet, quiet, quiet.  I thought I heard the treadmill chuckle softly.  Or maybe it was just one of my dogs snoring away somewhere.

I decided to try one of the pre-programmed interval workouts on the bike.  I chose a speed-interval one over a resistance one, because I am a masochist and am starting a 10K training plan soon and didn't want to wear out my legs for all of the speed intervals I would be doing.  It kept bouncing me between the mind-boggling speeds of 13 mph and 14 mph, and playing with the resistance as well.  But it wasn't anything too tough.

Pedal, pedal, pedal, quiet, quiet, quiet.  Ho-hum.  Kinda easy.  How anticlimactic.  I feared the bike would have little to say to my loud and noisy treadmill.

That is, until I had pedaled for about 20 minutes. I looked down and several rogue beads of sweat landed on my shirt after they rolled off my brow.  They joined a few thousand other ones that already there.

It seems I was getting a workout.  My heart rate was at about 160 when I gripped the silvery heart-rate-measuring thingies on the bike.  Quiet but effective, this stationary bike was.  It was all action and little talk.  I can respect that in a piece of workout equipment.

I have been using the bike on days where I do weight work, and it's a great low-impact cardio workout that's easy on this runner's knees.  Maybe it will give me the courage to sign up for that triathlon I've been thinking about doing for the past 2 years or so.

Or maybe it will make the treadmill jealous.  I guess we'll see soon enough.