Hows about a challenge

Okay, first of all, I almost did it. Ran my mile today, in a blazingly fast, Prefontainesque, 10:44. Not quite there today, I felt it about a lap in. I think I didn't warm up enough, maybe it has something to do with the cold weather, its like 55 out there tonight, or maybe I didn't stretch out enough, but however it happened, my calves were tighter than last time, and it seemed like I didnt quite have the push I did either. Finished 1/2 a mile in just over 5 minute, right on pace, then about half way through lap 3 I had to walk a little more, then I had to walk a little bit at the end of the lap. Last lap, just like last time, I went all out, for about 2/3 then had to walk a little bit, but then I sprinted at top speed for the last like 75 meters or so. I'm definitely happy that I took almost a minute off of my time, but I'm also a little disappointed that I didn't hit my goal, especially because I was so close last time. But here is the plan, I'm going to re-up my training, give it another shot in 2 weeks, and hopefully I'll obliterate 10 minutes. My new goal, well as far as breaking my current goal, is to take another minute off my time, that means I'm shooting for a sub 9:45 mile, woohoo, I like that kind of goal. And I like how I said, sub, makes me sound like a legit runner, lol.

Anyways, now to the meat of this post. Last post I did, I received a challenged, haha like all two of you reading don't already know that. Heres why I dont like that particular challenge: Being that its Wednesday night, probably Thursday by the time you read this, Jack has probably already lost his 1 pound and change, so I've probably already lost. I need a little time to make up the difference. So heres what I'm gonna do, I'm going to lay down my own challenge.

Mr. Jack Sh*t, I'm challenging you to a race to 200 lbs.

YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN THE T*ts on.that Weigh-In

Just taking a little advice on spicing up my boring titles. Haha, I thought that was pretty damn funny, thanks for the tip Ms CM. Good Stuff, good stuff indeed.

232.4 lbs--- Down .4 lbs

I suppose that this proves that nutrition probably has more impact on my weight loss (at this point) than does exercise. I think I've mentioned on here before that my job is pretty active and I burn a good deal of calories doing it. Just in case you haven't figured it out yet, I managed to follow up my "triumphant" workout Friday with nothing at all over the weekend. Its kind of funny how a couple extra hours can soon disappear completely. Saturday, after I got home from work, I spent a couple hours impatiently waiting for the mail to arrive to see if my paycheck was in it. Lately my mail hasn't been showing up until like 4 or so, but I figured I'd give it some extra time just in case. This may sound loserish, but I really wanted that check, I had big plans for it, lol. So anyways, after it still hadn't come by 5:30, I went to pick up my girlfriend from work, then we went for a late (well late compared to my normal routine) dinner. By the time I got home at like 7:30 or 8 I had no energy left to workout. Similar type of thing happened Sunday and I ended up not working out this weekend.

HOWEVER, The good part was my food intake. I normally end up, in the course of my 4 day work week, eating 4 breakfasts and 4 lunches (I leave for work at 4am and get off at 5) all from various fast food places, with an occasional Subway or similar sandwich mixed in. This week, I managed to eat only 1 breakfast and 1 1/2 lunches from fast food (1 lunch wasn't technically fast food, being from a food cart at my work, although it definitely wasn't healthy). Replacing my normal variations on a sausage egg and cheese croisant with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for three days, and subbing home made tuna sandwiches on wheat, and hot dogs (still not healthy, but less calories) with my normal choices, typically some type of burger, or fried chicken, or something else full of a million calories.

So I think the point is, somewhat better food, some exercise, and a lot of MIPHA (moderately intense phyiscal activity) lead to a good result on the scale. Nothing especially exciting or flashy, but it works. And if I could just do that every week, at roughly a half pound loss, after a year I'd be down like 20 lbs. Not too bad eh?

Wow, after that long and boring disertation, I'll add a little sunshine, figuretively speaking.

Today we went to the beach. In Seaside, we paroused the shops, walked the beach, hunted for shells and sand dollars. At Cannon Beach, we looked at some more shops, found the beach, walked about 3/4 of the way to the waterline, then turned around. By the time we got back to the car, after a stop at a grocery store for drinks, we were drenched, as in completely and totally to the bone, gotta love the Oregon coast, lol. Then in Tillamook, we went to the cheese factory, sampled some cheese, bought some cheese, and some chocolate milk, and some fudge (go figure, fudge at a cheese factory???). After that, and still soaking wet, we got back in the car and commenced the long drive home, well actually its only a few hours. After stopping at Hooters for some dinner we got home. My girlfriend dumped the sand out of her socks (dont really know how it ended up there, I guess its because the socks she wears barely get over her heels, I only had sand in my shoes, not socks) and changed out of her still damp clothes. My clothes has dried by then, but hers were still somewhat damp, this was like 3 or 4 hours after we got back to the car. All of this activity totalled roughly 24,400 steps. And despite getting caught on the beach in a downpour, it ended up being a completely awesome day and it left me with a few good ideas of other things to do at the beach. Not what you may be thinking, far more mature than that.

Now its back to be active tomorrow, lol.

"Use your abilities at this time to stay focused on your goal. You will succeed."

So said my fortune cookie when I ate at a Chinese restaurant several days ago. Well technically it was my girlfriends cookie, but she showed me the fortune and I stole it. I thought it was pretty cool, given my current situation and everything. Apparently some mysterious ancient oriental prophet thinks that I'm going to get myself in shape and go on to have a successful career in fitness. Right on.

Alright, remember how I mentioned last night (at the end of a super long, but good post) that I was going to get in a strength workout? Well.............................

I DID IT! Okay, definitely not trying to sound like a won a war or anything. But its the first time in like 3 weeks that I managed to get in a workout after work. I switched it up a bit too. Did my workout at home. All body-weight stuff, 12 exercises total, probably 140-150 reps all together, given some stuff that I had to do on both sides. Anyways yeah, I'm nice and sore now. Just in case you needed proof that you can get a challenging workout quickly, I was pouring sweat, and I'm sore, and the whole thing, including some stretches afterward, took no more than 20 minutes.

I get off at 3 tomorrow, so I should be able to get in a nice run tomorrow. And I'll be sure to let you know how I feel after my workout tonight. Haha.

I'm With Mike

I'm going to change things up a little bit today, and try to pay a little attention to other things that definitely deserve it.

Here in the Portland, OR area there is a local sports talk radio host named John Canzano, hes also the Associated Press sports writer of the year. Over the summer he help a charity event, it was an eating contest. One of the participants happened to be extremely over weight and unhealthy. After the contest was over, Canzano decided he would like to help him. So, after discussing it with the guy, 3 weeks ago he launched the "I'm With Mike" campaign.

The idea was to use the radio show to assist Mike in his journey to get healthy. It is now a weekly segment on the show, Mike comes on and discusses what he is doing and what progress he is making. After the first segment tons of people called in wanting to help, nutritionists, personal trainers, phyical therapists, health clubs. They made the decision that they wanted to be safe and have medical supervision, so after Canzano asked for a doctor to help them along, Mike announced yesterday that he was about to go to his first doctors appointment in several years, with a doctor who heard the plea on the radio show.

First let me say, that I think it is truly awesome that a radio host would even take the time to show interest in something like a fat guys weight loss. But to me, the most amazing part of the whole thing, is the huge amount of support that they have gotten in such a short time. Not only was their all the interest from health/fitness professionals that I mentioned before, but hundreds of people have called in and emailed just to express their support for Mike. Thus the name "I'm With Mike". In my opinion, its a completely awesome idea, and you can bet I'm going to be listening every Thursday at like 3:30 or so to find out how Mike is doing.

If you're interested in finding out more---
Uhm, I'm aparently not good at this whole linking thing. It looks like they don't have the podcast of the segment today on their website yet, but hopefully they'll get it up soon. It'll be Thursday 9-22, hour 1, and it'll probably be like 1/2 to 2/3 of the way through it. BTW scroll to the bottom of the page for podcast lists.--- http://thebaldfacedtruth.com/#two


Oh, and I made the decision to not workout out tonight, in favor of trying to get some extra sleep so I'll have energy to get in a bit of a strength workout tomorrow, then its on to the weekend, which I should be able to utilize some nice weather to add rack up some miles. BREAKING IDEA---- I SHOULD TOTALLY RECORD MY TOTAL MILAGE WEEK TO WEEK. haha brilliant, good non-weight way to track my progress.

As for now, listening to Smokey Robinson and Joss Stone on Leno, they're awesome. And then going to bed.

FUCK

Okay, I normally try not to use much profanity on here, but this time it is warranted, way warranted.

I've mentioned several times recently that I've been contemplating taking a crack at lowering my mile time, and trying to hit my 10 minute goal. Well today was the day.

So I got in a nice warm up, a good stretch, hopped on the treadmill and got going. First lap in slightly over 2:30. Second one passed at just about the 5 minute mark. I was starting to run out of steam, so I took it a little easy on lap 3: something like 7:45 or 7:50, I really didnt think I had a shot at 10, but it was still a PR shoe in. A little bit into lap 4 I figured what the hell, lets go for it. Up goes the speedometer (I think its called that on treadmills?) past 6 mph, past 7, past 7.5. There I am, sprinting my ass off, over 8 miles per hour, I've gotta be like 50 meters away from the finish line (imaginary of course because I'm on the treadmill), and I'm closing in on 10 minutes. I might not make it, but I'll get damn close. Then................................... BAM.

The treadmill stops. Shuts off, completely dead. The belt freezes, comes to a complete and immediate hault. To be completely honest, I'm probably pretty lucky that I didnt get hurt. But man, I'm so freaking pissed that it did that. Completely killed my workout too. After it happened, I tried to do some elipticalling (thats my new action word for using the eliptical), did the 3 minute fitness test thingy, scored like a 10.5 and it told me I'm Olympic again, lol, but didnt have any motivation to do more, tried to do some pushups and other body weight stuff, couldnt get into it. So, I did a little stretching, told the attendant about the treadmill stopping (she said it does it every once in a while and that I should use the other one, which I'm going to do from now on, even if theres people that are working out over there and watching TV and I dont want to get in their way) and left.

Perhaps the thing that suprises me the most, well other than almost dying on the amazing stopping treadmill, is that I feel pretty good. I'm tired, but thats normal after a tough workout. My body feels good, I figured I'd be really sore after that run. But I felt like I could keep going, not at the same pace, but keep going nonetheless. I guess the main lesson I learned today, is that even though I'm not losing much weight, I am getting in WAY better shape. Now I just gotta get the weight off, then I'll look good busting out 10 minute miles, lol thats slow but I'm working on it. And I'm gonna go up there and kick the 10 minute mile's ass in the next week or so.

By the way, Nature Valley Granola Nut Clusters, the cashew ones, are freaking good. I just had one, like 10 seconds ago, and they're hecka crunchy, but really good. (And 100% Natural, adds the girlfriend, haha)

On that yummy note, have a nice night, and a successful tomorrow.

Weigh-In 9-21 and then some

232.8 lbs--- up 2.6 lbs.

So yeah, the whole "workout weekend" thing didnt actually happen. And I ate fast food for 4 days, and I gained back almost all the weight I lost last week. Still a .4 lb net loss for the last 2 weeks. But damnit I was so close to finally breaking 230, looking forward to it soooooo much. Then I messed it up and regressed again. But maybe it will be a positive thing in the end.

With a little help from a certain very supportive blogette (thanks again), I've come to the realization that, on days that I work, even if I don't have the energy to go for a 3 mile run or a 45 minute lifting session, I can still manage to fit in a 20 or 30 minute workout. 30 minutes may not be better than 60, but even 20 is still way better than sitting on my ass all day. If all else fails, I can always make up some of the difference when I don't have work.

All that being said, I still managed to sit on my ass all day today. I love the internet because it gives me stuff to look at, but I hate that I tend to spend all day on it and my time just slips into the screen. I have to figure out how to keep it from taking up all my time. More importantly, I have to stop letting stupid shit get in the way of my workouts and the rest of my life.

Tomorrow is a new day, and a new beginning, and a new opportunity for me to get it going. It'll also be a pretty big test, because I think I'm gonna be pretty busy and have to scrape together some exercise time.

Well heres to building up some steam to get this fitness train rolling. (HAHA man can I come up with some cheesy shit, not literally) And heres to hoping that everyone was a good day tomorrow.

Routine

Unfortunately I've managed to stick to my routine for the last 2 days. In case you missed the post (it was in the last couple posts), over the last few weeks I've noticed that I haven't really had any energy to workout on the days that I have work. Its an energy thing, I'm just so damned tired after work that I dont feel like working out. So, true to form, I havent worked out for the last 2 days.

Arrrgghhh. Its annoying, and another reason why I dont like my job. But I seriously need to snap out of it tomorrow and Sunday if I'm going to finally break 230.

Alright, on my last post I mentioned some of the exercises I did in my workout. Remember? REMEMBER???? Lol, I mentioned the Standing Lat Pull Down, and that it was very difficult. Well lets just say, I dont remember my upper back ever being as tight as it has been the last few days. Neck, shoulders, between the shoulder blades, all hecka sore. But the thing that really surprised me was that my abs are sore. In my post I also mentioned that I didnt do any core work in my workout. And all the other exercises I did were the same as last time, so the only thing I can think of, is that the Standing Lat Pull Down worked my core pretty hard, I can still feel it in my upper abs, right around the bottom of my rib cage. Oh, and I didnt mention it because I didnt think it was particularly significant, but I did a lot of calf raises. I havent done calf raises in quite a while. And boy oh boy, my calves still hurt like hell 2 days later.

Oh well, I guess I should remember that pain is just weakness leaving the body. Or in this case, pain is just my body healing the micro-tears in my muscles that strength training causes and that it causes your body to continue to burn calories at an above normal rate for long after your workout ends. Good stuff, good stuff indeed.

Heres to having a successful workout weekend.

Yay for strength

Lame title, hahaha.

Okay, I did basically the same workout as last week. Made a few tweeks, and cut out the core work, because I want to be able to work tomorrow. But nevertheless, I got a great workout. Took like 40 minutes or so with warm up and some stretching during and after.

Every once in a while I like to use the opportunity that this blog affords me to offer people some tips on working out. This is one of those times: I did two of the most challenging and complex (in muscle usage, not performance) exercises that I've done in quite a while. Here they are:

1) Straight arm lat pull down-- At the lat pull machine, stand up, grab the bar and back up far enough that your arms are straight. Pull the bar down, keeping your arms straight, in an arc until either just before the weight stack hits the top of the machine or as far as your strength and flexibility will allow. Focus on keeping your arms straight and keeping your body from rocking back and forth with your movements. The move uses your chest, shoulders, biceps, triceps, abs and back. Take it from me, start out with light weight to make sure that you maintain good form and are able to perform the lift correctly.

2) Lunges with twist-- I used a stability ball, but you can use medicine balls, dumb bells, milk jugs, anything that ha some weight, or if you can just use empty hands. The important part is that you keep your arms extended fully in front of your body. Perform a traditional lunge, keep your knees roughly in line with your ankles at about 90 degree ankles, a little bit of leeway is okay, but injuries can happen if your knees get too far in front of your ankles. When you get to the bottom of your lunge, with your knee just above the floor, or as far as you are able to go, rotate your arms as far as you can in one direction, rotating your torso, keeping your legs still. Return to the middle, then repeat the movement in the opposite direction. Then return to the standing position and repeat with the other leg. This is a very exhausting and difficult exercise. Make sure that you perform the same number of repetitions with each leg. Remember to only do as many reps as you can with proper form, for this type of exercise stop as soon as you can no longer use proper form.


Okay wow, those were kind of long winded descriptions, lets just say, I'm better at demonstrating than at describing, haha. Regardless, those are still two completely kick ass exercises.

I just got an idea. Would any of you be interested if I were to record myself demonstrating exercises and post them on here. That could be an interesting new feature to this blog. But I'm only going to do it if my readers like the idea. So now is the time when I'm asking you guys to give me a little feed back.

On a bit of a different topic. I really like strength training, weight lifting, olympic lifting, all of it. I've enjoyed it ever since I started doing it in high school. Actually, thats probably the thing I enjoyed most about being on the football team. God knows it wasn't because we were particularly good, and I barely even got to see the field. But I've always loved lifting weights. And to be perfectly honest, throughout this whole process of getting back in shape, over the past few months, the most athletic I've felt has been tonight, and last Wednesday night, when I was getting in a really good lift. It gives me a nice little confidence boost too, which is freaking awesome, and always helpful.

This is gonna be long

Workout first: running, 3.357 miles, 52 minutes, 592 calories, avg speed 3.88 mph

Pretty freaking awesome workout. My farthest run yet, by like 1/4 mile or a little more. And if I'm not mistaken, I think thats also my "fastest" avg speed as well. I'm thinking that, in the near future, I need to time another mile to see how much I can take off the 11:30 and change I did a while ago. I think I've definitely improved my endurance, and thats really the only thing thats holding back my mile times. So, I'll have to give that a shot.

As I promised last night, I really don't know how I managed to lose 3 lbs last week. I got 2 good workouts in, really good ones, and spent 2 or 3 hours walking around the Vancouver Sausage Festival, which by the way is really cool, on Saturday. I guess a big part of it was that I took food to work most days, which cuts back my calories a lot.

Anyways, after the 3.2 lb loss, I'm currently .2 lbs from hitting my first weight loss goal, which is totally awesome. So I'm going to build on my awesome workout today, keep it going for the rest of the week, and (hopefully) the wall will finally be brought down.

I've noticed lately that I've been having problems maintaining workouts on the days that I have work. Its most likely because the crazy sleep schedule zaps my energy, and the last couple weeks have been pretty busy which also can make my job physically tiring. So, I'm definitely going to have to get a handle on the whole work thing if I'm going to be able to stay on the weight loss train.

I also wanted to mention the Biggest Loser premiere tonight. For the most part it was awesome. I'm worried for the one lady, I think her name was Tracy, the one that collapsed during the first challenge. To my non-medically trained eye, it looked like she had a stroke, so I hope she ends up being okay. This brings up the point that what the hell were they doing having these people, I think 5 people are over 400 lbs, running that much on their first day. I've been watching the show for several seasons, and thats really the only beef I have, other than the fact that someone can lost 15 lbs and go home, they make the contestants do stuff that they really have no business doing. I realize that it is a TV show, and they need to do entertaining and dramatic stuff to keep people watching, but there has to be some kind of happy median they can come to that would make it interesting and safe. Considering that the trainers are supposed to be world class, not to mention the team of doctors and exercise scientists advising, they have entirely too many big injuries, in my humble opinion. I guess this is probably debatable, but like I said, I absolutely love the show, thats just the issue I have with it.

As I said, this is pretty damn long. So I'm gonna grab a bite and go to bed. Hope you all had a successful day.

CRAP

Totally got distracted by America's Got Talent and the new Jay Leno Show, which was really good by the way, and forgot to post.

Uhm, real quick, weight in, 230.2 lbs, down 3.2 lbs. Completely surprised by it, happy, but surprised, hope it doesnt come back and bite me this week, lol. I'm going to bed, so I'll elaborate on everything tomorrow. Crap I hate not posting on here, tomorrow I'll make up for it. Stay tuned. Hope life is going well for all.

Well

Unfortunately, I wasn't actually able to find out any information about how training on an elliptical relates to running, just a bunch of people saying ellipticals are better. I did manage to stumble onto one amazingly scientific and interesting discussion board about the difference between running on treadmills and running on the ground. Apparently, there are people, and even scientific researchers, who believe that running on a treadmill is significantly less effective than regular running. Not to get into boring sciency stuff, but they say that the treadmill, among other things, eliminates wind resistance (which it does), and utilizes different, and smaller, muscle groups then does running on the ground, which in turn makes it less efficient of an exercise, meaning you'd burn about 3% less calories. Okay, I guess I did get into the nerdy science part, lol. But I found it interesting. I'm am absolutely intrigued by science, but thats a story for another day.

Anyways, today I didn't get a work out in. Instead, I decided to focus on doing some stretching and relaxing and trying to loosen up my still tight and sore muscles. I made it through work okay, but it would sure be nice to not be so damn sore, haha. Tomorrow I'll have more time and be able to get in a nice hard workout, which will be good. Hasta Manana.

Ah My Old (New) Friend

The elliptical.

30 minutes, 3.1 miles, 300 calories, avg speed of 6.3 mph.

Whew I'm freakin exhausted. When I stepped off the machine my legs were wobbly. Thankfully, after a bit of a cool off and stretch they stopped doing that.

Quick hit, does anyone happen to know how elliptical speed/distance relates or translates to actual running???? I'd be very interested to find that out. If no one knows I might actually have to google it and see if I can figure it out on my own.

And in case any of you are wondering, I'm still pretty sore from last night. Nice and stiff and tight. I thought working out would help, but it really didnt. Oh well, hopefully it'll get better by tomorrow, it'll be pretty hard to do my job if my arms are still this sore, lol.

Now I'm gonna go pass out. Hope you all had a pleasant day and evening.

Late Weigh-In and more

233.4 lbs --- up 1 lb

As I mentioned Sunday night, I wasn't expecting a good weight this week. Messed up pretty bad last week. So I'm just moving on.

Didn't do a tough workout yesterday, did go on a bit of a walk with my girlfriend (hmmm I should come up with a cool nickname for her, girlfriend just sounds boring, lol) something like 3/4 of a mile or maybe a little more.

Tonight, I worked my arse off. Well...... yeah whatever, the "funny" line I was gonna use kinda slipped out of my head just as quickly as it popped in. I did like 45 minutes of strength training. Definitely a good workout. Uhm, I was going to list what I did on my workout, but that sounded boring, and I didnt feel like it. If you're interested in it then just ask and I'll blog about it later, I think I might actually stick to the routine I did tonight. Its pretty kick ass and for sure I'm gonna feel it in the morning. Hopefully I can get up, lol. I think I've mentioned it previously on here, but basically ever since I got out of college, where I did all kinds of super intense lifting routines, I've never managed to actually put down a plan on paper and stick to it. I'm going to record this one and keep at it and see where it takes me.

Okay, well I completely lost my train of thought and I have no idea what I was going to say. So anyways yeah, how do you like the whole "inner dialog" thing I've been doing the last couple posts? Like where I say what I was thinking or what I almost said or whatever else. If you think it makes it more interesting then let me know, if you don't like it then say it, and I'll knock it off, haha.

Well thats all for me tonight. If I can make it out of bed in the morning, I'll let you all know how it goes.

Busy Busy Busy

So I had a super busy work week. Made me a lot of money, but unfortunately it also made me a lot of tired. Didnt really have any energy left over to workout. I guess being busy at a somewhat physical job means that I did burn some calories, but it doesnt make up for not working out.

Luckily for you, the reader, my computer has been on the fritz the last few days, so you didn't get the opportunity to read "I'm tired", "I'm tired", "Too tired to workout" every day.

Oh well, weigh-in tomorrow morning. Hopefully I don't completely implode. (I almost said "Hopefully the scale doesn't screw me", but of course, the scale has nothing to do with it, I'm the lazy ass who didn't work out.) Then its back to actually working out. Its gonna be a good day, I'm going to make it be a good one. I'll let you know how it goes.

Good run

2.7 miles, 45 minutes, avg 3.56 mph, 460 calories

Like I said, good run, almost no leg pain at all. Nice sunny day, and all that fun stuff.

To be perfectly honest, I can't really think of anything to say. So I'll keep it short.

Quote of the Day: "I've been spending way too long checking my tongue in the mirror. And bending over backwards just to try to see it clearer. But my breath fogged up the glass. So I drew a new face and laughed." - Jason Mraz "I'm Yours"

Haha, good stuff, awesome random.

The End of Summer

is almost here. So, in my attempt to fully enjoy every last drop of it, I went swimming tonight. I love the pool. That signals another transformation I've made, although this one has happened over a period of several years, I used to hate swimming. I don't know when or where, or even why, it happened, but now I find myself looking forward to early June when the pool in my apartments opens. Hopefully by this time next year I'll be in a position to not have to worry about the pool closing, either by having a membership to a pool, or living in new apartments with a year round pool, but thats a whole different story that I'm not going to get into tonight.

The point is this, life isnt about where you start, its about how you change and adapt, and more importantly its about where you end up. When I started on this adventure, I didn't like where I was in life, I feel that I've made some positive changes, and I think I like where I'm headed at this point. And, thanks to some very supportive people, and a little bit of reflection, I have to say that I'm pretty happy with where I am at the moment.

Oh, also should mention, that yesterday I spent roughly 30 minutes on the eliptical. That shit is tough. Oddly, it was harder at the end when I was going slow trying to cool down then it was when I was at the peak of my workout. I started off the session with a fitness test. after several minutes trying to figure out what to do, and a 3 minute test, I spent a couple minutes trying to figure out what "OLYMPIC" meant. Apparently, that was the result of my test, although it offered no explanation of what it meant. So I guess, according to a nautilus elyptical, I am now an Olympic caliber athlete, I could get use to hearing that, lol. Then I did 10 more minutes, then another 10 minutes, then the afformentioned extremely difficult cool down. All together, I got somewhere between 25 and 30 minutes, and somewhere north of 250 calories. Not bad at all.