Aches, Pains and Clarity

When you are a bigger girl people tend to expect you to be unhealthy. They sometimes expect me to not be able to run or be very athletic or even to have normal blood pressure. People see me exercising and tend to believe that I am doing it because I want to be skinny like other people. Sometimes the thought crosses my mind, just how much easier my life would be if I was thinner, but for the most part I exercise because I want to be healthy and strong, not necessarily thin.

At this time I have frozen my gym membership and have began just running and working out with my best friends just in the area around where I live. I have never liked running in the past, I have found it boring and annoying. But recently I have found that when I run it gives me a chance to clear my head or just not think about those things that plague me the rest of the 23 hours of the day. It is nice until I have to worry about the aches and pains for the next day or so.

But no matter the aches or pains, I am willing to continue because I can see my improvement over such a short amount of time. A couple of weeks ago when we started running I couldn't run for very long at all, now I improve each day and can run longer and faster, depending on the weather, stupid asthma. And even better I sometimes get to run with my dog and I am pretty sure that he enjoys it as well. Overall I am ready to keep up this venture through all the pain.

Climb Every Mountain

Or in this case stair.

Let's talk about StairMasters. It is the newest machine at the gym that I am attempting to work out on. And I do mean attempting in the loosest of terms. When I got on it for the first time last week I started to have an asthma attack. Between the pain from lack of oxygen and the fear I had of falling off the machine I quickly decided that I wouldn't be stepping on that death trap again anytime soon.

Seriously check out this machine

You can't tell me that this doesn't look completely scary. There is at least a foot and a half between the first step and the ground.

However I faced my fear today and got on the death machine again. I made it twice as long as last time without stopping which was a great achievement. But even more than just that, this machine made me sweat like no other machine I have been on in the gym. Not that the other machines don't give me a good workout but literally sweat dripping down my face, it was just so weird.

I liked it very much, it made me feel like I was actually accomplishing something at the gym and in such a short amount of time, which is nice because I have only been dedicating about 30 mins to the gym after work these days. And in all honestly that is a big improvement over the not going at all that was happening before now.

It is my personal goal to work out two important things this summer in the extra time I will have. One, to get a nice tan so I don't look like a ghost in the dark at night, and two, have a fantastic set of gluts. A little vain you may say and perhaps it is but I will be working on other things at the gym as well that will make my body a bit stronger and that is the ultimate goal. Nice gluts are just a side effect ;)