Cross Country Elliptical Workout

What it is, everybody! Today I am in a very peculiar mood.

I’m not tired, but I’m not amped up with energy. I’m not terribly busy, but I’m certainly not bored. I have just the right amount of things on today’s To-Do list to make today a productive one, which is the perfect remedy to truck my day along and listen to some good tunes via Pandora.

One of the first things up is to share a new workout (and funny story) that happened at the gym last night. Let’s get right to it!

30 Minute Cross Country Elliptical Workout

I have been loving the elliptical lately. Since I seem to have been bitten by the running outside bug again, every time I do cardio inside I veer towards the elliptical, leaving the treadmill temporarily behind.

More times than not, I hop on a machine and plug in whatever program seems good for the day. Occasionally, I mix it up and create my own workouts. Here the one I set out to create last night when wanting a little mix of hill climbing and interval work.

After thirty minutes, I was pretty darn sweaty and it felt wonderful.

Now time for that funny story…

While I was wiping off my machine, I was still in my listening to workout music zone. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my locker key drop down to the floor, but didn’t see where it landed. I also heard a pretty loud noise and ignored it for the moment to finish wiping down the equipment.

When I finished, I spent a few minutes looking for my key. I looked under the machine, in the pedals, behind the gears, and everywhere imaginable around my spot. Where the heck?! After a good five minutes go by, I turned off my music and got down on my knees to search through any possible space in the machine it could have fallen into. I know I looked like an idiot playing with the pedals with my hands and examining the machine like a freaking science project. I’m sure I was pretty entertaining to watch.

Without any luck, I finally left the machine to find help. This has had to happen to someone before, and worst case scenario I thought the maintenance staff could open my locker, and I could just replace the key.

As I approached the service desk, I opened my problem with “this is going to sound kind of crazy, but…” and explained what happened. Both trainers looked at me very confused, and the man agreed to walk over to the machine and help me look for it. (I’m sorry, but I probably would have laughed with the person. With… because I was already laughing!)

Before we even got to the machine, there the key was right on the floor next to the pedal as visible as could be. I felt like a complete dork. I politely thanked him for his “outside eye” and told him at least he would have a good story to tell someone later. I told you… I lose things (mainly keys), and I am nowhere close to perfect.

After that fiasco, I headed over to the free weight section, turned my music back on, and completed my go-to Arm Workout with Dumbbells. I finished off my workout with a set of ab exercises (I will be sharing with you very soon!) and five minutes of stretching.

Breakfast

I don’t know if it was the workout or the 5K we ran Sunday, but I woke up this morning with incredible stiffness in my neck and shoulders. I felt a little sore yesterday too, so I am leaning towards the obstacles in the 5K that did it. As I made breakfast this morning, I talked Scott into giving me a few minutes of neck massage time and it seemed to have done the trick (for now).

We have a lot of avocados to go through, so I have a feeling today’s eats is going to involve a serving of one at every meal! On the menu today was scrambled egg whites with mushrooms, green and red peppers, and a little bit of shredded cheddar cheese.

I sliced up half of an avocado to split, and I had half of a whole wheat English muffin smeared in peanut butter. Where is the other half, you ask? Oh… I actually had to fight the toaster to get the remains of that out. (Man, I am on a roll this week!)

After breakfast I enjoyed some morning snuggling with this little girl.

Have I expressed how incredibly needy our pets are? Roadie is a given, but recently Aspen has been all over every single thing I do and  is literally in my lap as I type.

Like I have said for a while now, we do have children. They are just a little furrier than most of yours. 😉

Question of the Day

• What is your favorite type of cardio machine?

Mine has always been the treadmill. Well, I guess it is not my favorite, but it is the one I use the most. Second to that is the elliptical, then the Stair Master (love to hate it), followed by the indoor bike.