Baby steps

Today is National Walking Day.

So we walked.

We walked to McDonald’s for coffee.

We walked around the neighborhood.

And another neighborhood.

We walked until someone fell asleep in the stroller.

We did it because it is National Walking Day, of course. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that someone woke up at 4:30 a.m. and refused to go back down.

We covered just more than 2 miles during our little adventure. While I read a blog post recently where the writer said she didn’t consider walking exercise (for her, personally), I am in the “it all counts” corner. I think if you do something with the intention of moving your body for health benefits that it counts as exercise. If you go for a walk to burn calories, you exercised. If you walked down the street to deliver cupcakes to your neighbor, it might not count.

Not that it matters what I think. I am not an expert. The ones at the American Heart Association, the group behind National Walking Day, have this to say:

"There are countless physical activities out there, but walking has the lowest dropout rate of them all! It's the simplest positive change you can make to effectively improve your heart health.

Research has shown that the benefits of walking and moderate physical activity for at least 30 minutes a day can help you:

• Reduce the risk of coronary heart disease
• Improve blood pressure and blood sugar levels
• Improve blood lipid profile
• Maintain body weight and lower the risk of obesity
• Enhance mental well being
• Reduce the risk of osteoporosis
• Reduce the risk of breast and colon cancer
• Reduce the risk of non-insulin dependent (type 2) diabetes

What are your thoughts? Do you plan to take a few steps for National Walking Day?

Queen of the hill

Workout: 2.52 miles on the treadmill and 1-mile walk with Denali

We were somewhere between Warsaw (Indiana - not Poland) and Chicago on Saturday when a workout in the most recent issue of Fitness magazine grabbed my attention. A walking workout. Of course, I had already been in the car with my in-laws for more than an hour so a workout walking a hamster would have caught my eye.

But anyway ...

I decided in my tired stupor this morning to give it a go and took the trusty magazine to the gym this morning so I could get my sweat on. Or at least turn my cheeks bright pink.

You start out with a 5-minute warm-up between 3.0 and 3.5 speed and a 1.0-2.0 incline. After 5 minutes, you alternate 2 minutes of "race walking" and a 1-minute recovery (at warm-up pace). The race walking settings take the speed between 3.6 and 4.2 and the incline gradually increases from 5.0 (I think) to 10.0. At some point, you get a 4-minute recovery before alternating 1 minute of race walking with 1 minute of recovery pace. There's more to it than that but I don't remember and the magazine is at my house, probably being shredded by Denali. I saw him eying the cover model ;)

He thinks he's such a ladies man.

I kept my recovery speed between 3.0 and 3.3 and my race walking speed between 3.6 and 3.8. I had a sweat but didn't feel exhausted, and the constant changes kept me from being bored, as did "Water for Elephants" on my iPod.

And since this post isn't really exciting and is lacking in details, I'll leave you with this - a sighting at the hotel gym on Sunday.

I was casually running on the treadmill when an older gent, and I say older because he had a head full of gray hair, hopped onto the treadmill next to me. He immediately bumped up the speed to 6.5 and continued to finagle with it from there. At first, I was paying attention because I was jealous and then it was because his increased speed was shaking my treadmill, making it difficult for me to keep pace. I was annoyed. I went to give him a "look" when I noticed the oddest thing. He was wearing a cotton tee, cotton shorts, white tube socks and loafers. LOAFERS, I say. They reminded me of the Eastland shoes I coveted in my Catholic elementary school days. My feet just hurt looking at him.

Have you ever seen such a thing? Got a story to top this one?

A Labor Day's labor

A little catch-up from Monday ...

Pre-workout fuel: Slice of whole-wheat toast with banana
Workout: 30 minutes yoga and 2.25-ish mile walk with dog in the a.m. Upper body strength in the p.m. (while catching up with "Dexter").

I had my coffee, my peanut butter toast and a couple blogs to read. The clock - it read 7:05 a.m. Normally, I'd be rushing around, frazzled that I had yet to start my workout. Oh, but this day was Labor Day and all I had on the schedule was a 1 p.m. lunch with a gal pal.

Sip away, Kim. Sip away.

Once I finally got motivated to start my day, I found myself also motivated to try a new yoga workout on OnDemand. Or what I thought was a new workout on OnDemand.

"Body Slim" is "an active series of yoga postures that flow together to build long, lean muscles; improves your flexibility; and makes you drip with sweat."

Tell me about it. The workout started off with core (ugh) and went through a cardio sequence then a slow burn sequence. Once the second cardio sequence began, I became keenly aware that I had done this workout before ... and quit.

Reason No. 1:

Reason No. 2:

As much as I'd like to practice yoga, I am more of a do-er. And I only do yoga when my head allows me to believe that I can do the given poses. My head usually doesn't like me to think that I can do downward dog splits and then bring my knee to my chest ... my knee to my tricep ... my knee to, well, just about anywhere.

That brain - it's so funny. It tells you that you can't do something but if you are motivated enough (or don't want to embarrass yourself in front of your husband, who is eating frozen waffles on the couch), you can do things thought impossible.

Like the downward dog split.

I won't say that it was easy. It wasn't - at least for me. And I definitely struggled through the third and fourth salutations, which featured the poses. But I allowed myself to do it, and I'm thankful for that. Maybe I'll even try it again next week. Maybe.

How do you keep your mind from defeating you?

If the shoe fits

Pre-workout fuel: Half-slice of whole-wheat toast and half-caff coffee pre-yoga. Bowl of Kashi Island Vanilla biscuits with milk and a banana.
Workout: 30 minutes yoga, 2-ish mile walk with Denali and 20 minutes upper body with weights.

Brooks ... Mizuno ... Saucony ... Asics ... Puma. Oh, the shoe wall at Three Rivers Running Co. How it tempts me!

Mark and I stopped at my fave running shop in FW (OK, it's the only one but whatev) so that he could get a pair of shoes. He's been running in 2-year-old Nikes that he got at Kohl's and with him signing up for Fort-4-Fitness, an upgrade was beyond necessary.

We walked in, and Mark made a bee line for the shoes. Silly boy! He knew he had to be fitted first. I directed the salesgirl to him and she got him on the treadmill in a pair of neutral-fitting Brooks. It was quite the feat, he said later, given the fatigue of our 11-miler. His gait analysis showed that his right ankle flopped in a bit, and he'd need a stability shoe.

The first shoe he tried was an Asics pair. He found it to be quite heavy, not surprising as he calls his other pair of sneakers (Asics) "clodhoppers." The salesgirl said he wouldn't like the other shoes she grabbed for him and went to the back to get a pair of Brooks Adrenaline and some Mizunos. He tried them both on but it was love at first step with the Brooks.

While he was doing all of that, I couldn't help but want to look for me. My shoes have about 325 miles on them so they should be good through the half marathon. But that's not the point. I want new ones! Namely, the Brooks Ghost 3, which received the Editor's Choice Award from Runner's World. I have never worn this shoe so my desire is completely arbitrary. It's just me, being a girl. A girl who LOVES shoes.

How often do you replace your shoes?

Up dog

Pre-workout fuel: Half-slice of whole-wheat toast and Amaretto Cream roast coffee
Workout: 3o-minute yoga workout ("Joy of Yoga" with Sara Ivanhoe); 2-ish mile walk with Denali; and 20-minute upper body workout while watching last night's episode of "Teen Mom."

I need a new yoga workout. It's not that I don't like the ones I have. I do. It's just that sometimes the instructor, Sara Ivanhoe, sounds like she gets paid for being flexible - if you know what I mean. "This should feel gooood," she says. It distracts me. It makes me laugh and then I get all messed up with the "yoga is about breath" thing.

It's true, too, that have the P90X one at my house but it's 90 minutes long, and I feel like a slacker when I quit at 35 minutes. I don't like to feel like a slacker. So after winning Rustbelt Runner's CSN giveaway, I am looking to stop complaining and actually get something.

I'm currently thinking about "Yoga Conditioning for Athletes."

I'm not sure that I'm an athlete, per se, but I could use some hip stretching and whatever else he said he'll do.

I'm also on the lookout for a new yoga partner ...


But I'm not so sure I'll find that on CSN. (By the way, he was in "down dog" just moments before this was snapped.)