Today I Am INSPIRING

I am in awe of myself. This morning Hubby & I met with our new trainer, Ray.  I was a bit nervous, though I've worked with trainers before, and I was also excited about working with Hubby and starting a new thing together. (The gym offered us 2 for 1 training so how could Hubby say no?)

It started out not that bad--new machine for me--kind of an upright ab machine--you have your arms raised behind you a tad, bent at the elbows then push down. 3 sets of 15. . . Ok. Know my abs will be a bit sore tomorrow.

Has us climb the stairs. (This was funny because he told us to go up the stairs, so we did and stood at the top and hung out there waiting for him. . . he comes up and says, "Come back down!" Apparently, the routine is to walk up to the landing and return, but how did we know?? I guess he was thinking we'd run away already!)

Next to the machine to do leg extensions--3 sets of 15 at like 30 lbs. . .my right knee was feeling it a bit, but OK. In between sets he made us get up and do 15 squats.

Next to the hamstring curl machine, same reps and sets.

More steps.

Then we did 15 shoulder presses, 3 sets with just 5 lb weights, between each set we did bicep curls. Before the last set we did a flight of steps--and after the sets we walked up the steps with the weights in our hands.

So this was all well & good for our first 30-min training session.

But here's where the amazing, inspirational part  was. . . he told us he wanted us to do 3 cardio sessions a week--Hubby on treadmill and me on elliptical. Now I haven't done the elliptical in a long time, and I know from expreience it takes me like 3 minutes to get to my target heart rate. And I think, perhaps, the longest I've ever done is not more than 12 consecutive minutes on it. So I say to Ray, I'm not sure I have the endurance for this, and he says, "Just try to stay on."

He gets us each situated on an elliptical (despite what he'd said about Hubby walking) and as as he walks away he says to Hubby: "Do 20 minutes." He says to me again, "Just try to stay on. Good luck," he pats my back.

I have to admit that if Hubby wasn't there, I would have quit. I kept watching to see how long he'd go. And if I'd gone in alone without a trainer, I would have probably done 3 minutes and thought, "Ok good start."

But  Ray just acted like it was doable. And Hubby was doing it. So I just stayed on. My arm hurt. My hip hurt a bit. My right leg started to feel tingly. I'd just slow a bit. The heart rate thing either stopped working or I had a weird response (it went from 146 to 147 to 149 to 54 then 73. . .), but I just kept moving and hanging on.

I did 20 minutes! I AMAZE MYSELF!!

I sat on the seat of the rucumbent bike a few seconds to get the jello out of my legs and held on the the railing as I went down the stairs, with Hubby lovingly keeping pace beside me, but. . . WOO HOO we are on our way!

It's gonna happen. I'm gonna be able to ride bikes in Acadia. . . I just have to keep staying on.